Obviously. But if we could make everyone understand, then we'd be covered.

Every few months here, we get a customer asking why we can't automatically handle purchase orders that they send us in PDF format, and every time they get the same explanation.

If we could make everyone understand, we wouldn't need computer programmers. We could just have computers talk to each other, and all their formats would be magically compatible, and the vast body of data conversion code wouldn't exist.

The problem is that computers are made for humans, and humans are often wantonly illogical. You're not going to change this, short of Skynet and the rise of the machines. So it makes sense to put up with a fair amount of coding pain to make things easier for your users. It's lucrative, at least.

Think of it as a full-employment theorem for data-miners.