A answer from MAK

[white-eagle]

thank you

The PDF version of the magazine should be called "electronic", not "online".

Most online web versions of magazines are fairly worthless as they never have all the same content as the paper magazine.  An electronic PDF is an exact replica of the paper magazine and could even be printed on paper if the publisher has not disabled printing of the PDF.

thank you for clarifying what i said about 5 comments ago. let's see if you get corrected, also.

[HighTechRedneck]

Hmmm.  I've been offline for a few days (not online, electronic or pdf  ) and am catching up on some posts.

Tom, sorry, I did miss you point.  The way I read it was that you were stating that it should be html based and that the PDF format was a lesser alternative but still good.  Clearly from you replies, that was not your intent.

As for online vs. electronic version, a lot of "online" user manuals are PDFs.  But I tend to agree "electronic" version might be more correct.  But then again, is it really "electronic" since it doesn't have circuits?    Maybe it's merely a "PDF version"?  But since this is no place for a "technocrat" discussion, then I supose it shouldn't be a place for "semantic" discussion either.    (just kidding, in my opinion, this is a fine place for both kinds of discussions)

[ktmossman]

As PDF is an industry standard web-viewable file format, pdf files can indeed be considered "online".  However, to be technically precise, I would think it comes down to the delivery method.  Since we get the magazine by email, it is "electronic," but not necessarily "online."  If we went to a website to view the pdf file, it would be "online". 

To further confuse the issue, what about those of us that get the pdf via email, but view our email through a web browser?