The author is proposing that the DAG representation be in addition to the PDF:
>The organizations drafting guidelines should release them in structured, machine-interpretable formats in addition to the downloadable PDFs.
My opinion: Ideally the PDF could be generated from the underlying DAG -- that would give you confidence that everything in the PDF has been captured in the DAG.
I have not drafted a PDF myself and I doubt doctors will. They work in a text writer or spreadsheet application and then export or print to PDF would be my guess.
An interactive interface could spit out the PDF with the decision three in the end. This solution would still mean the decision tree source is in some software package.
>The organizations drafting guidelines should release them in structured, machine-interpretable formats in addition to the downloadable PDFs.
My opinion: Ideally the PDF could be generated from the underlying DAG -- that would give you confidence that everything in the PDF has been captured in the DAG.