dorf wrote on Aug 15^th, 2009 at 9:36am:

I've had 1899/18866/18185 accounts for more than 5 years and have never used anything but the HTML version.  Very easy to copy and paste onto a Excel spreadsheet (sorry, mentioned Microsoft software there).

Heinz and NGM'sG, I have always previously used the html version of their invoices only. This problem only arose because they made a change to supposed "pdf" invoices. The way in which they made this change on their site had made it unclear that there was still an html version of their invoice available on the site, because they had arranged the sham "pdf" link to look as if it was the same link as what is now the html link right next to it. Until Andy9 pointed this out to me I was not aware as a result of the close proximity that the html link still existed.

dorf wrote on Aug 16^th, 2009 at 4:30pm:


dorf,

The html link version still appears clearly on my PC using Mozilla Firefox 3 for Windows.  So could this problem be being caused by your Linux version web browser of whatever kind?

dorf wrote on Aug 17^th, 2009 at 12:51am:

dorf,

You may be interested to hear that I have just upgraded to Firefox's new Version 3.5.x with its supposed bunch of extra features over Version 3.0.x only to find that basic text search on a web page is currently mysteriously scuppered by this trendy new version.  So it would seem that not only Microsoft release rubbish poorly tested software on the unsuspecting public...............

catj,

You cannot have "versions" of a "Standard". The whole point of having a Standard in any sector of interactivity is that it is a fixed and specified format to ensure compatibility and interoperability! Once you decided to have more than one version of a Standard that would not be a Standard any longer. That would defeat the whole purpose of having a Standard, and would not conform to the definition "Standard".

Take an example: the metre is a Standard unit measure of length. If you had more than one standard for a metre where would we be? This is why in Standardization we have a complex system of International Standards, sub-standards and sub-sub standards to maintain the structure, and the value of the intrinsic unit.

I take your point NGM'sG. It is a prevalent problem with all SW that new versions have bugs introduced and if not tested properly cause every user problems.  All I can say is that at least if the product is not selling at prices to create one of the very richest proprietors in the world, one can perhaps be more forgiving of human error and a failure to thoroughly test?

Catj,

Sorry, I meant of course that you cannot have different versions of a Standard which are incompatible and not interoperable; that is the definition of a Standard. That is its very purpose - to ensure compatibility. You can of course have different versions of software, and these may not be interoperable, and increasingly often are not; but they are not Standards. This is one of the problems with the immaturity of today in engineering and software - the failure to understand why Standardization is so important and that to have no engineering rigour and to just change things "willy nilly" leads to a great waste of resources and costs, and great confusion!

One of the great difficulties arises when children who do not understand things, are unwisely treated as if they were adults and given unfettered ability to wreak havoc. This is what has happened now with the original IBM PC Standard for example. IBM always paid attention to these things since they had proper engineers and proper engineering Standards with rigour. Once the situation changed and IBM lost control we then began to have the problems we now experience and suffer increasingly; no one can be sure quite what OSs will work with what hardware and what software will work with what OS etc. The whole point of pdf was to overcome those difficulties, and to have a format which was portable across all operating systems and hardware. If children who did not understand the original purpose of this have been unleashed as supposed experienced adults, and allowed to make different versions of pdf which are incompatible then it has completely lost its purpose and become a white elephant. If some "versions" of pdf will not work with some OSs or older versions of pdf applications (backward and forward compatibility) then pdf has lost any relevance to anything. What could it possibly exist for any longer except perhaps to attempt to replace MS Word?

As I pointed out before, if we had different versions of the Metre then everything would fall apart! However child "engineers" will probably want to change that soon, because they do not understand what they are doing in the totality of things or how we got here. [Queen Elizabeth I is reputed to have had a plaque on the wall of her bedroom. It listed the causes for the collapse and fall of the Roman civilisation, probably one of the greatest which ever existed, to remind her to avoid the same mistakes. One of the reasons on that list was "Accepting youthful council."] 

Maturity and mature civilisation understands Standardization and the need for it.