Community Blogs: Kurt Foss: Playing the PDF name game: Common-sense filenames, please!

Posted: 2010-01-06

Playing the PDF name game: Common-sense filenames, please!

I ran across a recent PDF-related blog post that was part pet peeve, part New Year's resolution -- one I share with the author. David Appell wrote:

"If I could have only one thing for the new year, it would be that journals start to name their PDFs with useable filenames."

In his case, the frustration results from a practice at some of the science-oriented journals, from publications like Science and Nature, he regularly downloads in PDFs, reads and saves for future reference. His specific annoyance has to do with the meaningless filenames -- to the end user, at least -- too often given to such documents. As he explains:

"They are almost always named something like '709.pdf,' where 709 is the page number. But that's all--no reference to the journal name, author name, subject, issue, month or year."

"Because two minutes after 709.pdf gets to my hard drive I have no idea what paper it refers to. Sure, I can change the filename, but why should 10,000 of us have to change the filename when Science can do it just once and make it meaningful to both them and to us?"

I know the feeling. My particular experience along the same lines has to do with my favorite sport of tennis (both playing and watching). I play in various recreational leagues throughout the year sponsored by the local branch of the United States Tennis Association (USTA), which also provides on its website a wide range of useful tennis information--much of it as PDF files.

Documents include the official rules of tennis, newsletters for coaches, training guides, guide to tennis on college campuses, assorted practice drills and games, umpire and line judge guides and so on. I've saved a wide assortment of USTA PDF files over the years. But unless I take the time to re-name each one after downloading, I'll end up with a folder full of files with cryptic names that tell me nothing about the contents.

A few examples:

• Rules of Tennis
  Filename: doc_13_16051.ashx.pdf
• The Code: The Players' Guide for Unofficiated Matches
  Filename: doc_13_22409.pdf
• High Performance Coaching Newsletter 8
  Filename: doc_437_391.pdf
• Learn to Rally and Play Book
  Filename: 8EFA5FFCD0E3461CAEEFB19958E5208C.ashx.pdf
• Top Ten Games Every Coach Should Know
  Filename: doc_13_12673.pdf
• Chair Umpire Handbook
  Filename: doc_13_2319.pdf
• General & Experienced Player Guidelines
  Filename: 9B46CE5C64B14C04B93686466D9C47AA.ashx.pdf
• USTA Guide to tennis on college campuses
  Filename: doc_437_452.pdf

Is it too much to ask some organizations to make the effort to help users identify document content by the actual names of the files they post for public consumption?

How about about using 2010tennis_rules.pdf rather than doc_13_16051.ashx.pdf, or top10games.pdf rather than doc_13_12673.pdf?

I've made that common-sense suggestion in several USTA surveys, but so far apparently to no avail. I'm hoping 2010 might be the year this practice changes at USTA, and also with the journals that likewise frustrate David Appell--and likely others, too.

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