On more than one occasion, we've found that some people can't read PDF files. Sometimes it's a question of people not having installed the Acrobat Reader, and sometimes it's a question of the installed reader not working.
Adobe, the company behind the PDF file format, has made the download and installation procedure more complicated. What used to be a quick download, has now become much longer download. The current size of the Acrobat Reader is about 20 megabytes.
Download size set aside, we've encountered 2 clients where our PDF files couldn't be read by our clients. The PDF files were perfectly ok. It could be a version problem, or it could be a faulty installation. Nevertheless, it happens from time to time, that your PDF file can not be read by some.
What's the solution? PDF is still the most stable format possible, unless you need straight text, in which case you should be using a .txt format. Sending Microsoft Word .doc files across is far less reliable. PDF works most of the time, but count on some people not being able to read these files.
We think it's still best to use PDF, and deal with the problems as they arise.
