
What Will Replace PDF? - chrisstpierre
PDF-like documents are a very common need. However, PDF as a format is not the best. Documents are not reliably consistent across platforms&#x2F;readers, and have vulnerabilities. It really seems like something that should be replaced, but isn’t. What will replace it?
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NonEUCitizen
Actually, PDF _is_ the best there is -- it may not be perfect, but nothing
else is as "reliably consistent across platforms" as PDF. Your assumption that
it "should be replaced" is not widely shared.

Microsoft tried to promote its very good, open, and well-documented XPS
format, but it didn't take hold.

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PhilWright
Anything you replace it with will, over time, suffer the same problems. If it
becomes popular then it will have vulnerabilities. As technology and its uses
change, it will need updating to match and so become versioned and have legacy
features and complications in implementation. That is just what happens to all
formats. Many people just use PDF as a simple way and showing documents and
printing them out on standard office printers.

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PaulHoule
Microsoft's XPS format is one of the few direct competitors. Then there was
Yann LeCunn's DjVu format which takes the radically different approach of only
being a format for encoding documents as images (as opposed to text and
vectors)

It's much easier to call out PDF for what you hate about it than to make
something that covers the same use cases better.

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tannhaeuser
What about HTML+SVG? Where HTML is merely and atypically used to bundle
multiple embedded SVGs, and the SVGs are already prerendered as SVG doen't
support refloating and paging? Though do we really a new print-oriented, non-
responsive format?

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gshdg
One advantage PDF has over many of the alternatives being suggested here is
that it’s not read-only. I have yet to see a fillable form in an ePub doc for
instance.

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dredmorbius
ePub seems a posible contender, thouh many individual pubs are _horribly_
formatted.

PDF remains highly usful, particularly in its fixed pagination. Though small
devices fare poorly. Tablets are about perfect, form-factor wise.

Another option is publish-to-endpoint, on demand, allowing selection of, say,
PDF, HTML, or other preferred format.

