[Antrikshy]

I’ve never understood what everyone’s issue with PDF is.

It’s like digital, printed paper. Part of the reason is pretty much ubiquitous compatibility.

If it needs to be edited, just don’t print it on digital paper. Does the format have other issues?

[herewulf]

Here are a couple ideas:

1. Dividing some amount of text into pages on a computer screen is unnecessary and annoying.

2. Adobe has a stranglehold on the format and is constantly dicking around with it. Lately I encountered a fillable PDF that Acrobat Reader refused to fill. I could fill it with Firefox but after saving it was no longer a fillable form for any Acrobat user. What's the point of a fillable form that disallows filling it out?!

3. Adobe increasingly supports JavaScript for form validation, etc. I can only imagine what a nightmare mess that is. If we're going to shoehorn in a browser, might as well just use a browser.

[zokier]

PDF is really a family of formats. There is the "good" (=sane) PDF, PDF/A-2, and then bunch of less good stuff (all the rest). PDF/A-2 doesn't have any interactive stuff, like forms or JS, and is a ISO standard that is not going to change under your feet. Because it is such mature and limited format, most readers should have no problem with PDF/A-2 files.