on december 9th, 2012, jon said:

  You sacrifice the ability    to change fonts on the fly    which is important to some people

a .pdf does not allow the person to change the _size_ of the text, and that is a factor far more important to a good many people. plus, even then, there are a number of other variables that users _might_ want to control which can't be changed when they use a .pdf. it's amusing that _exactly_ one year earlier -- december 9th, 2011 -- i posted a message where i shared the first-draft of a checklist of the variables that readers like to control:

  http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/private/gutvol-d/2011-December/008474.html

some of these _can_ be controlled -- at least in _some_ viewer-programs, using some formats -- but most of 'em can't be changed in a .pdf; they're frozen in the concrete of that format... that's why we should give end-users the ability to make a .pdf customized to their preferences; unfortunately, i think the la/tex learning-curve is too steep to suggest it as our path for that. but it's nice jon can make a .pdf that _he_ likes! -bowerbird p.s.  i wouldn't put jon's versions out in public, however, since there's no need to introduce _more_ one-off snowflakes to an already-confused situation. just more crap the future will have to analyze and toss aside once it decides it must sort it all out... p.p.s.  my dad came from a family that had 12 kids -- 6 boys and 6 girls.  and my mom came from a family with 12 kids: 6 boys and 6 girls.  what are the odds?