Yep.
Often I'll search for a research paper somewhere, or some other type of manuscript, or perhaps a data source or some set of charts or statistics. These sorts of things are often prepared separately from the a web document, and are made available as a pdf document. Citations and references, or simply links to related pages are just as useful there as they are on a normal webpage. Especially as pdf documents can by opened in the same way as a webpage, links in these documents seems as valuable there as they are on a normal webpage. Given that the pdf document and the webpage, then, are serving similar purposes, the relevant question seems to be why you would prefer to use a pdf document rather than a webpage. And the answer to this is presumably in the ease of preparing the document, and the range of uses for which it's designed. That's why manuscripts and data sources seem to be pdf documents (for portability), while other content seems to be available via normal webpage (for ease of creating nice effects).
Interestingly, the difference between the two will presumably shrink over time. Even now, if I create a document in Word I can convert it to pdf or to html with a click of a button. Obviously, using Word as an html editor in this way is a miserable option...but I imagine html functionality will improve over time in these applications.
When I create documents for my students, I also find it useful to include web links. As the pdf file is a reasonably efficient way to make these documents available, I will often have URL links in my pdf documents.
Chad
Poll
