HACKER Q&A
📣 fakedang

Why has PDF not been replaced with HTML5?


Perhaps the answer is very obvious, but why is it that PDF has not been replaced by the HTML5 format for most on-device documents outside of programming?

Take for instance, company annual reports and pitch slides - you could make the usage of charts and data objects a whole lot more insightful by just giving the option to interact with the charts and choose your data selectively. The same goes for research papers - a small visual gif or video component would go a long way to show things compared to a series of sequential images, as would interactive charts - even the simple ones that you get from Excel.

  👤 thesuperbigfrog Accepted Answer ✓
PDFs were designed for typesetting, printing, and publishing documents.

"Based on the PostScript language, each PDF file encapsulates a complete description of a fixed-layout flat document, including the text, fonts, vector graphics, raster images and other information needed to display it." Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF

HTML5 was not designed for typesetting and lacks such features. (For example, HTML does not specify page sizes.)

👤 leephillips
Research papers: you want your paper to look the same for everyone. Equations, tables, and many elements of typography need to be preserved among devices. PDF is the only format we have, aside from just distributing images, that does this; HTML certainly does not. It’s a shame, though, that there’s no standard for embedding video that works for everyone.
👤 warrenm
I addition to thesuperbigfrog's answer [0], PDF files tend to be static, and distributed in such a manner that you don't want them being changed without a relative high level of effort (yes, I know there are PDF editors)

>a small visual gif or video component would go a long way to show things compared to a series of sequential images

Tell me how a small GIF or video is going to work when you print a paper or collect it into a book or journal, please :)

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[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33787463

👤 breckenedge
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