Why so many pdf documents?

The website has a lot of pdf documents.  The links are visually identified with an Adobe Reader icon and the documents will open in a new browser tab.  There are three reasons why I use so many pdf documents:

  1. Length:  Any document in my files that is more than 15 or so pages has been converted to a pdf document.   Some of the smaller files may eventually be replaced by multiple webpages as I find time to convert them.
  2. Numbering:  Most of my genealogies use the d’Aboville numbering system because Microsoft Word produces the numbers automatically with its “outline numbering” feature.  There is no counterpart in html, meaning that duplicating the numbering on a webpage covering more than one or two generations is  very difficult.  So for the time being, every document in my files that addresses more than two generations is converted to a pdf.
  3. Formatting:  A number of my Word documents use other sorts of formatting that is awkward or time-consuming to reproduce on a webpage.  Some of these may be converted eventually but initially they are presented here as pdf documents.