I have Adobe Acrobat Pro, so when I've done PDFs in the past I use that and the results are typically very good and very accurate. i know that most other people don't have access to it (I only have a license through school). The PDF generator on the toolserver is a great idea, and though there are some problems, I thnk it's a great start. A few points/retorts:
Do we need stable versions. I don't really see the need. Perhaps someone could give examples of stable books that have deteriorated due to the ease of editing.
It has nothing to do with deterioration over time, it has more to do with the stable dependability that teachers and students will depend on over a semester. A teacher needs to be able to say "The homework is on page 95", and have all the faith in the world that page 95 today is the same as page 95 tomorrow. With that said, "stable versions" is basically a misnomer, because they aren't stable in a general sense, only with respect to a particular audience. That is, we could get a request that says "i'm teaching X class, and i want Y book to be stable for the duration of the semester." We could then create a stabilized version of that book for use in the class, while continuing to develop the book on the wiki in the background.
In short, the editing never stops, and students/teachers have the stability that they need in order to use our books in their classrooms.
Further, if we do, then are PDF versions the way we want to do it.
I think so, at least in part. PDF versions have the benefit that they can be set up the way we want them (with the GFDL text automatically included where it needs to be), etc. Also, PDFs can be downloaded to people who don't have guaranteed internet access, it can be distributed on CD, etc. Generating a PDF can be a pain in the ass too, but I think that having to make copies of pages, protect them, tag pages with a notice that "there is a protected version at..." can be just as big a pain in the ass. If we have a "good" PDF generator tool on the toolserver that we can use automagically, then it might actually be a better option, at least in terms of effort involved.
I like the method we have now, where books have printable versions (on wiki) and PDF versions. If we also had stable versions (especially if we had a tool for automagically creating such versions without requiring lots of copying, page protecting, etc), that would just be a bonus. In short: we should have many methods.
--Andrew whitworth