Sep 22, 2011

PDF, a succesful format: why?

The PDF acronym stands for Portable Document Format, for its well known feature of documents keeping their appearance on different computer platforms and printers.
I do not understand why such a widespread and general interest has produced only one format of this kind, which requires the purchase of an expensive commercial software, which has the monopoly of PDF creation,  modification and protection.
In addition, after over 20 years after its introduction, PDF files are still slow to open and view with incredibly powerful machines.
In the era of e-books, it is time for something new.