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The Editable PDF Initiative

editablepdf.org

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Re: The Editable PDF Initiative

#61

Post by enriquto »

BEEdwards wrote: post #29

I think it's funny that the top two comments of this post are diametrically opposed, yet I kind of agree with both of them. The PDF is a terrible format, yet if I'm sending an email with an attachment I want you to see exactly how it looks on my computer then I'm exporting to PDF. However if your book is only available as a pdf I'm probably going to skip it. PDF is good for short things, a contract maybe. The best us…

> However if your book is only available as a pdf I'm probably going to skip it.

Wait, what format do you expext a book to be? I mostly skip any book that is not on pdf

Re: The Editable PDF Initiative

#62

Post by Terretta »

enriquto wrote: post #61
BEEdwards wrote: post #29

I think it's funny that the top two comments of this post are diametrically opposed, yet I kind of agree with both of them. The PDF is a terrible format, yet if I'm sending an email with an attachment I want you to see exactly how it looks on my computer then I'm exporting to PDF. However if your book is only available as a pdf I'm probably going to skip it. PDF is good for short things, a contract maybe. The best us…

> However if your book is only available as a pdf I'm probably going to skip it. Wait, what format do you expext a book to be? I mostly skip any book that is not on pdf

Something that reflows when you change text size, font family, or page orientation.

Re: The Editable PDF Initiative

#63

Post by xvilka »

bscphil wrote: post #48
xvilka wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the idea behind PDF is good, just revamping the format will help a lot - remove the unnecessary features, ambiguities, remove old and legacy features, etc.

If what you want is "PDF the way it should be", we already have that, it's PDF/A. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF/A

With PDF 2.0 and corresponding PDF/A 4 they did steps in the right direction, but there are still droves of unnecessary and ambiguous features.

Re: The Editable PDF Initiative

#64

Post by enriquto »

Terretta wrote: post #62
enriquto wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However if your book is only available as a pdf I'm probably going to skip it. Wait, what format do you expext a book to be? I mostly skip any book that is not on pdf

Something that reflows when you change text size, font family, or page orientation.

I am not sure that we can call a text that has not yet been typeset a "book". In any case, do you know any such format that does not completely botch equations? The closest I can imagine is html with mathjax.

Re: The Editable PDF Initiative

#65

Post by majkinetor »

Terretta wrote: post #62
enriquto wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However if your book is only available as a pdf I'm probably going to skip it. Wait, what format do you expext a book to be? I mostly skip any book that is not on pdf

Something that reflows when you change text size, font family, or page orientation.

You can also reflow with Foxit PDF Reader FYI (on all platforms)

Re: The Editable PDF Initiative

#66

Post by lawry »

klodolph wrote: post #19
ropiwqefjnpoa wrote: post #13

I'm not going to say the PDF format is perfect, but I do like sending out documents knowing that in general they are going to be opened by a reader in a presentation format. I'd rather they not be opened by an editor, where my viewers are immediately invited to start making changes like a word doc. I suppose having them open initially in a non-editable mode would work, Acrobat functions that way.

It’s phenomenal for so many use cases it’s absurd. I have a huge stash of PDF files—tons of articles that I’ve saved so I can refer to them later. Meanwhile, half the links I have to blog posts are dead, if not more. I know that I’ll be able to read these PDFs 10 years from now, or 20 years from now. Plenty of them are 10 or 20 years old. PDF is great for: - Archiving. It’s self-contained and will work 20 years down…

You might want to take a look at the singleFile chrome/firefox extension. It essentially combines all images, scripts, css into one html file that can be opened offline. As a bonus you can edit the html page with the inspector to hide irrelevant parts and it will save it in that state.

Re: The Editable PDF Initiative

#67

Post by aurbano »

enriquto wrote: post #64
Terretta wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something that reflows when you change text size, font family, or page orientation.

I am not sure that we can call a text that has not yet been typeset a "book". In any case, do you know any such format that does not completely botch equations? The closest I can imagine is html with mathjax.

eBook formats can do that, but they may struggle with math notation - I haven't read any mathematical work on ebooks.

Re: The Editable PDF Initiative

#68

Post by Angostura »

klint wrote: post #44
kccqzy wrote: post #36

Meh. Not being easily editable is a feature, not a bug. Sometimes you want to send out a finalized document and want to make 99% of the users unable to edit them. That's what PDFs are for. Imagine lawyers needing to send out a finalized contract. Or a graphic designer sending out the finalized design. Or an electronic book that has gone through the work of the author, the editor, and the publisher and needs no more c…

That objection, and others, are addressed in the project FAQ[1]. It's already possible to open and edit a PDF in various applications. [1] https://editablepdf.org/faq/ >But isn’t the whole point of PDF that you can’t edit it? No. The fact that standard PDFs are difficult to edit is more of an accident than a feature, as PDF’s roots are in printing, where only final-form documents needed to be transmitted. Many people…

> The fact that standard PDFs are difficult to edit is more of an accident than a feature, as PDF’s roots are in printing, where only final-form documents needed to be transmitted.

I disagree with this - I was an IT journalist when PDFs came out and all the blurb at the time was centred around the advantage of being able to create a document and know that it could be displayed by anyone, irrespective of machine, OS etc while retaining visual fidelity.

PDF only became a thing in the print production world quite a bit later. For many years, you were making sure your printer got the QuarkXpress Files and all the high-res asset files collected together into a single folder and zipped up.

Re: The Editable PDF Initiative

#69

Post by saudijews »

Isn't that because the files have been created by jews arabs, or all those other shits who write the wrong way? You know all those donkey enthusiasts aren't familiar with the left to right type of civilized systems. If your pdf is wrong, perhaps a jew or other primitive person has compiled it. You never know with these people.

Re: The Editable PDF Initiative

#70

Post by gpvos »

piadodjanho wrote: post #57

The PDF file format is anachronous. When the format was created, computers only had a few KBs of RAM. Yet the format should be capable of editing documents with thousand of pages. The format solves this issue by delegating the memory management to the user. Also, the file was made with the assumption it was suppose to be printed, not shared. It is easier to hide parts of the document instead of removing the data. A f…

The main reason making a "save as PDF" is hard is the font handling. The rest is fairly straightforward.
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