[WEB4LIB] Re: PDF versus HTML

[Jimm Wetherbee]

| I think you've been lucky. I've seen PDF documents range from barely over
| the size of the plain text to hugely inflated files 10 or more times
| larger. Yes, graphics and color often play a role in this. ;-)
[--jimm replies] 

It sometimes depends on how the document was produced.  We have a full color
PDF newsletter that is initially produced in Publisher of only a few pages
that is typically under 500 K.  There are lots of clip art and photos, so I
live with 500 K.  Besides, I once tried to produce it in HTML and took ten
times as long and didn't look half as good. Frankly, I would still prefer
HTML--all things being equal--but I have neither the time nor expertise to
do such a project justice and it still wouldn't look like a newsletter but a
collection of articles.

At any rate, normally such a document comes out to under 500 K if one goes
from Publisher (or Word) to PDF.  However, one month the editor printed a
copy of the newsletter and somehow deleted the file.  My choice was between
attempting to recreate it Publisher (expertise wasn't an issue, but the
deadline was) or scan the print.  That turned what might have been a 470 K
file into a 4.7 MB monster.

| 
| What do you mean by "HTML overhead"?
[--jimm replies] 

My guess is all the extra tags and style sheets to get the formatting to
work out correctly and reliably over a number of platforms.





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