No matter who you are or what sort of things you do in life, there’s a pretty good chance you have to deal with PDF files from time to time. This document format has had its day, and it causes numerous problems on modern screens, yet it just doesn’t show any signs of going away.
I think the need to get rid of PDF files is becoming more clear by the day, but what exactly would we replace them with?
The undying zombie of digital documents
There’s a special kind of digital misery that comes from opening a 57-page PDF on your phone. You’re pinching and zooming, trying to decipher 8-point text that looks like it was spat out of a fax machine. It’s a familiar experience—because the PDF simply refuses to die!
PDFs were created as a way to give a document an absolute, invariable design suitable for print. It was never meant to be how we consumed documents on a screen. This is why opening and viewing a PDF on a smartphone is such a pain. It’s like you have to read a large format book while legally blind, using a magnifying glass to scrutinize a square inch of the page at a time.
Yet, your bank still sends statements as PDFs, government agencies will send you PDFs, if you buy an eBook that has more than just text in it, or a digital magazine copy, it’s probably going to be a PDF. It’s a format that just doesn’t seem to match the way we all read documents these days, so it’s an endless source of frustration.
Why PDFs are still everywhere
While the world of computers moves fast, some things are surprisingly hard to get rid of. There are still some companies and government agencies that use floppy disks, for example, because the systems they’re using have extremely long lifespans, or would be too expensive or disruptive to replace.
Just so, PDFs have some entrenchments and a few advantages that make it hard to replace them with anything else:
- PDFs have a locked layout, so it’s the most extreme but also the most reliable way to ensure that a document looks exactly like the creator intended.
- It’s a totally offline format that’s easy to store and archive.
- It’s basically the de facto standard for document archival, especially for legally-relevant records.
- PDF reading capability is basically universal, and is embedded in lots of devices.
Wait, this makes PDF files sound kind of awesome, so what am I complaining about? Glad you asked, because now we can get to the pain points of PDF files.
The pain points of PDFs
As I mentioned, PDFs were designed for print, not screen viewing. There are an infinite variety of screens people use every day. All with different sizes, resolutions, and aspect ratios. Since PDFs can’t adapt to the screen they’re being viewed on, unlike the website you’re reading right now, for example, it means that you’ll probably have to engage in constant scrolling and resizing to read the document.
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We could all use a change of perspective.
Back when I was still working in academia, I had to deal with mountains of PDFs. For one thing, all the journal papers I used to write research reports were in PDF format. The only way to do this efficiently was to use my second 27-inch Dell monitor in portrait mode. This let me fit one entire PDF page at a comfortable reading size with no scrolling. Anything smaller than that, and I’d rather rub my eyes with sandpaper.
The other big problem is that PDFs are terrible to work with if you want to edit or annotate them, and especially if you want to collaborate with other people. It’s an OK format for a document that’s reached its final form, but nothing fills me with dread like being handed a PDF with a request to modify it.
The worst are PDFs that aren’t actually digital text documents. Instead, it’s just some paper document that’s been scanned in and containerized in a PDF. So the text isn’t selectable except through OCR, which is usually riddled with errors. That’s maybe not the fault of PDFs in particular, since you can do this with any document format, but there’s something about PDFs that seems to motivate this lazy solution.
Add to that the potential for PDFs to contain malware (though this is no longer common) or that the file size for PDFs can be extremely bloated if the creator isn’t careful, and I’m ready to say goodbye.
What do we actually need from a “portable document”?
The intention behind the Portable Document Format isn’t bad, but when it was created in the early 90s, there’s no way that anyone could have foreseen the world of computing devices three decades later. Back then a PDF would either be seen on a large computer screen (often a special desktop publishing portrait model) or on the printed page. What we need from a “portable document” today and what PDFs offer is at odds.
So here’s what I personally would want from a replacement format:
- Responsiveness: It should work on every screen size.
- Accessibility: Built-in support for screen readers, semantic markup, and proper structure.
- Searchability: Text should be real, indexable, and copyable.
- Collaboration: Real-time edits, comments, and suggestions.
- Archival Support: Stable over time, standardized, and human-readable if needed.
- Open and Interoperable: No vendor lock-in or proprietary dependencies.
I get this is a big ask, and that if it were so easy someone would have done it by now, but how much longer can PDFs persist? Will aliens still find PDF files on surviving media after human civilization eventually falls? I hope not. To both things.
Possible replacements for PDFs
The truth is that, right now, there’s no single PDF killer. For a while, EPUB files were going to be the answer. These would automatically reflow a book or magazine to best fit the screen. In practice, it didn’t quite work out that way, and EPUBs work best with mostly-text documents like novels.
What Is an EPUB File (and How Do I Open One)?
Here’s how to crack that virtual book open.
Using technologies like HTML and CSS, it’s possible to make documents that are dynamic and look good on any screen. The thing is, right now that doesn’t also offer you a “print stable” document and that’s important for official use. It might be fine for the general public that’s never going to print a document, but that’s not enough to dethrone PDFs.
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Style tips that won’t go out of fashion.
Markdown is a lightweight format that focuses on structure over style. When paired with good viewers (like Obsidian or web renderers), it becomes a powerful document tool. It’s easy to write, version control friendly, human-readable. However, it only offers basic layout and design control, so again PDFs will drag it down and beat it with reams of printer paper.
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“No subscription necessary” is my favorite part.
For documents that are really data under the hood—like invoices, contracts, or reports—a structured format that separates data from presentation like JSON can be ideal. It’s highly machine-readable, flexible, and customizable, but then human readability goes down the drain.
In the end, the only way to let PDFs go is to accept that you can’t have one format that does everything perfectly. We might have to let go of the obsession with absolute layout control, but mostly the large institutions that won’t let PDFs go have to help everyone by moving this archaic document into the digital shredder.
