this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2026
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"Don't use that proprietary format ! Use PDF instead !"
PDF is also an issue.
There are often also accessibility issues with PDF files depending on how they were created.
For best results, print your word doc and scan it back in on a flatbet scanner. Fun fact you don't even need to keep the piece of paper square to the scanner.
Or just take a picture of your monitor and text it.
Hire a barbershop quartet to sing it to them.
Unrelated anecdote, my brother's then wife post a picture of them on Facebook. Our aunt saw it, took a picture of her monitor with her phone, went to the store to have them print the photo out on photo paper, and then mailed it to my brother.
So he got his original photo back, but at a greatly reduced quality and with monitor glare added!
PDF can be opened anywhere, that's my point.
* Only if you dont use the many still proprietary extensions of PDF I suppose.
Anyway I'm not sure following the Adobe standard in our institutions is the smartest move.
Not solely, but since sooooo many documents are already only available in PDF, you need to support it for backwards compat alone, plus all the people who just wouldn't migrate their data to a new format because the old one still works for them.
I'd love if there were a true open standard with the same capabilities and support, but you're not gonna get companies to adopt that out of the kindness of their hearts.
Do you have a better idea, pal?
This is a conversation about the issue of proprietary formats in our institutions.
And I think PDF is a problem in that regard. It's not fully open and the format still can break. Forms in particular are still very problematics. Forms are very useful in institutions...