pdf, javascript, and flash was Re: hello

[C.M. Brannon]

"Sina Bahram" <sbahram at nc.rr.com> writes:

> Javascript, pdf, and flash all have purely accessible ways of being
> accessed. PDF's especially have come a long way, flash is quickly catching
> up, and javascript only causes problems during certain events where keyboard
...
> I actually think such technologies should be increased, or whatever is to


JavaScript is a bad idea.  Do you really want random people running
random code on your box?  Quite a few firewall administrators agree
with me about this, because they don't allow it.
Unfortunately, we have to live with it.

PDF has one use-case IMHO: the creation of printable documents.  I use
it quite often for this purpose.  However, storing documents in PDF is
a step backward, rather than a step forward.  Why?  PDF is *not* a
machine-readable format.  HTML, ASCII, RTF, and even Microsoft Word
are machine-readable.  This does not hold for PDF and PostScript.
Unfortunately, many people seem to use PDF for document storage, even
though it is not suited to this task.

As for Flash, I cannot say much about it.  From what I know, its
purpose is the transmission of animated movies.  I doubt those are
terribly accessible.  Regardless, sending me movies that I cannot see
is a waste of my bandwidth.  Finally, Flash is a proprietary format.
Why should I care about it?

-- Chris