February 14, 2009

Rush: PDFs cannot be searched

Should Adobe expect a support call from Rush Limbaugh? A post by Media Matters could make you wonder how someone could miss both the Find and Search functions. Here's an excerpt from Memo to Limbaugh: Try CTRL+F before blasting Dems for purportedly unsearchable bill:

"During the February 13 broadcast of his syndicated radio program, Rush Limbaugh claimed that Democrats 'have reformatted the bill -- they've made it a PDF [Portable Document Format, created by Adobe Systems] file when they posted it. Now, for those of you that don't use computers, basically what that means is that it cannot be keyword searched. A PDF file is essentially a picture of a page. And, so, you can read every page, but you cannot keyword search it. It's not a text file as legislation normally is as posted on these public websites. They don't want anybody knowing what's in this."

It does seem that somebody doesn't want those of us that don't use computers to know what's in the bill. You'd need a computer and a lot time searching to figure out what was in the 1000 pages or so that, like the Patriot Act, most legislators won't really read.

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