Direct PIC to PC without MAX232

[Charlie]

It's simple enough to protect the device with a series resistor and clamp diodes to limit the excursion to the rails give or take a diode drop. You only need to protect the receive, of course.
I'm not sure I'd recommend this for a commercial application, but for a hobby build it would be fine. Of course, many of the devices offer the ability invert everything, set up by the UART configuration bits. But if you have a device without that capability, this is a "quick and dirty" way to get communications going.

[tumbleweed]

It's simple enough to protect the device with a series resistor and clamp diodes to limit the excursion to the rails give or take a diode drop

Right, but that's not what the OP suggested. FWIW, Fig 3 in the PDF suggests some simple ways of protecting the input pin, including your method.