Most journals I read offer both reflowable HTML and PDF. I don't know anybody who prefers the former.
A PDF (and the paper copy it generates) is more convenient for markup, and for memory. I can look at papers I read decades ago, and know where to go to find things, because of what I might call positional memory. Somehow, my brain has information such as "The key Figure is at top of third page" or "that equation I think is wrong is at the bottom of the second-last page". I'm not alone in this. I suppose it's just how brains work (e.g. people who do memory tricks "store" the information in an imagined space).
When I look at reflowed text, I just get lost. I can't make notes that "stick" with the text if I enlarge the font. And memories don't form in the same way as for PDF/paper.
I suppose this might be field-dependent. I think in some fields the key point of a paper is a single sentence, which could be identified easily in reflowing text and then copied into a separate file. I don't read papers like that, though. That's why, in my line of work, PDF/paper is superior to reflowable text.
Flowed text doesn't mean that it won't be printed. It means that it could be printed the way you want it, not the way the author wanted.
This comes in handy when the author decided that 50% of the surface of paper should remain blank, or using a tiny font. They may find it helpful, others not. Same goes for the decision to have pages at all.
The only aspect where I see in which someone else making an unappealable decision for you is superior, is convenience. Conditional on that other person being an expert in the field [of printing].
A PDF (and the paper copy it generates) is more convenient for markup, and for memory. I can look at papers I read decades ago, and know where to go to find things, because of what I might call positional memory. Somehow, my brain has information such as "The key Figure is at top of third page" or "that equation I think is wrong is at the bottom of the second-last page". I'm not alone in this. I suppose it's just how brains work (e.g. people who do memory tricks "store" the information in an imagined space).
When I look at reflowed text, I just get lost. I can't make notes that "stick" with the text if I enlarge the font. And memories don't form in the same way as for PDF/paper.
I suppose this might be field-dependent. I think in some fields the key point of a paper is a single sentence, which could be identified easily in reflowing text and then copied into a separate file. I don't read papers like that, though. That's why, in my line of work, PDF/paper is superior to reflowable text.