Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Guido van Rossum: “PDF Must Die.” (2014)

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 65 posts

Re: Guido van Rossum: “PDF Must Die.” (2014)

#11

Post by jobigoud »

shubhamjain wrote: post #5

I am wondering why there is still no compiled HTML format in any age when web pages can render almost everything (at least, I can't think of any from the top of my head). With base64, images can be embedded without any external dependency and I think it should be easy to reduce what Javascript can do to address privacy concerns (like, disabling XHR). A web page renderer is more ubiquitous than PDF. Web pages are resp…

EPUB? It's zipped rather than compiled but that's an implementation detail when all platforms can unzip in memory.

Re: Guido van Rossum: “PDF Must Die.” (2014)

#12

Post by legulere »

Probably it's actually the other way around.

PDFs usually fulfill lots of typographic criteria for better legibility like use of justified text and ligatures that are hardly used in HTML or badly supported.

The only real problems are with two column text moving around is annoying and you often have to zoom in. However with a modern touchpad offering 2D scrolling and pinch to zoom this is hardly a problem anymore.

Re: Guido van Rossum: “PDF Must Die.” (2014)

#13

Post by delcaran »

james_morton wrote: post #3

PDF was made for printing, not displaying. As someone who has been in the printing business for a long time, PDF was a god send, no more worrying about missing fonts, no more page margin differences, no more driver discrepancies. What you see is what you get, wherever you open it, wherever you print it, that is huge .

> What you see is what you get, wherever you open it, wherever you print it, that is huge.

Not really, it depends on the PDF software. I have printed the same bill with SumatraPDF, Acrobat Reader X and Acrobat Reader DC: different fonts, different sizes and missing logos...

Re: Guido van Rossum: “PDF Must Die.” (2014)

#14

Post by tkvtkvtkvtkv »

james_morton wrote: post #3

PDF was made for printing, not displaying. As someone who has been in the printing business for a long time, PDF was a god send, no more worrying about missing fonts, no more page margin differences, no more driver discrepancies. What you see is what you get, wherever you open it, wherever you print it, that is huge .

portrait page layout on a landscape screen when what we really want is multi-column landscape layout

Re: Guido van Rossum: “PDF Must Die.” (2014)

#15

Post by shubhamjain »

jeandejean wrote: post #7
shubhamjain wrote: post #5

I am wondering why there is still no compiled HTML format in any age when web pages can render almost everything (at least, I can't think of any from the top of my head). With base64, images can be embedded without any external dependency and I think it should be easy to reduce what Javascript can do to address privacy concerns (like, disabling XHR). A web page renderer is more ubiquitous than PDF. Web pages are resp…

> "A web page renderer is more ubiquitous than PDF" Just any browser can render a PDF as well. PDF is good because it guarantees the formatting intended by the author.

Most mobile browsers can't the, last time I checked. Although, it's easy enough to read PDF with so many options on Android, but opening another viewer and then zooming, scrolling is just painful. PDF might guarantee the formatting but I think it should only matter when it comes to printing.

Besides that, fixed size containers and fluid grids give plenty of flexibility with web documents. So in case, the author intends to have fixed formatting, I think it's achievable with HTML and CSS.

Re: Guido van Rossum: “PDF Must Die.” (2014)

#16

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

jeandejean wrote: post #7
shubhamjain wrote: post #5

I am wondering why there is still no compiled HTML format in any age when web pages can render almost everything (at least, I can't think of any from the top of my head). With base64, images can be embedded without any external dependency and I think it should be easy to reduce what Javascript can do to address privacy concerns (like, disabling XHR). A web page renderer is more ubiquitous than PDF. Web pages are resp…

> "A web page renderer is more ubiquitous than PDF" Just any browser can render a PDF as well. PDF is good because it guarantees the formatting intended by the author.

And PDF is bad because it guarantees the formatting intended by the author. The author's formatting might work on a single screen, but it sure as hell won't work on the multitude of devices that access the web.

PDF guarantees the end print result, but it shouldn't be used for anything else.

Re: Guido van Rossum: “PDF Must Die.” (2014)

#17

Post by foota »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #4

From an additional tweet, we can see that Guido's biggest reason for disliking PDF is the text not being responsive. This is actually my FAVORITE thing about PDFs. They're like pages. They perfectly replicate the book medium they are often taken from. If I want to make something bigger or smaller, I can do that, and it just works with zoom. It's not trying to guess what I'm trying to do and adjust things in ways I do…

I just wish that PDFs were more developer friendly, from what I've seen they're kind of a painful format (not that the modern web page is any easier to read the source of but still)

Re: Guido van Rossum: “PDF Must Die.” (2014)

#18

Post by cpach »

jwdunne wrote: post #10
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #4

From an additional tweet, we can see that Guido's biggest reason for disliking PDF is the text not being responsive. This is actually my FAVORITE thing about PDFs. They're like pages. They perfectly replicate the book medium they are often taken from. If I want to make something bigger or smaller, I can do that, and it just works with zoom. It's not trying to guess what I'm trying to do and adjust things in ways I do…

They're delightful to read on mobile too with a reader that maintains zoom and allows continuous scrolling. I don't mind flipping the page but it's far more friction than flipping the page of an actual book since you do it about 5 to 10 times more.

What mobile PDF readers do you recommend? I’ve been longing for zoom fixation and continuous scrolling but had no idea this existed in current apps.

Re: Guido van Rossum: “PDF Must Die.” (2014)

#19

Post by 0xmohit »

Quoting https://twitter.com/gvanrossum/status/533337876415533056

  @eugeneglybin Proprietary though it is, DOC[X] is easier to reflow to fit my screen. Also, I guess PDF fans don't use mobile screens enough.
Reflow isn't about PDF per se, it is about the underlying reader being used.

That said, it is certainly a much better alternative than DOC[X]. Different versions of Microsoft Word tend to produce different output for the same document.

With PDF, you are guaranteed the same output upon printing to any device; which isn't quite the case with DOC[X].

Re: Guido van Rossum: “PDF Must Die.” (2014)

#20

Post by Arcanum-XIII »

delcaran wrote: post #13
james_morton wrote: post #3

PDF was made for printing, not displaying. As someone who has been in the printing business for a long time, PDF was a god send, no more worrying about missing fonts, no more page margin differences, no more driver discrepancies. What you see is what you get, wherever you open it, wherever you print it, that is huge .

> What you see is what you get, wherever you open it, wherever you print it, that is huge. Not really, it depends on the PDF software. I have printed the same bill with SumatraPDF, Acrobat Reader X and Acrobat Reader DC: different fonts, different sizes and missing logos...

That's why when you're trying to print professionally, you're gonna use the original software and not something that try to re implement it. I know it's sad, because open source, but when a (good) standard exist that is closed source, we have to made due, till something arguably better exist.
Post reply on HN