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The Editable PDF Initiative

editablepdf.org

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101–110 of 162 posts

Re: The Editable PDF Initiative

#101

Post by bloak »

It sounds like what they want is a bit like what you get with a word processor provided that everyone is using the same version of the same program on identical systems, so you don't have the current situation of the layout getting completely broken because different people have different fonts, different paper sizes, and so on. In which case it's an interesting idea, but they shouldn't call it "PDF".

Although it's an interesting idea, I suspect it will never work in practice because word processing is just too complex. There are just too many complex features that people expect to have available. Different implementations will never be sufficiently compatible. Perhaps the solution is to bundle your document with a WebAssembly binary of a particular version of LibreOffice? OK, maybe you could separate the rendering functionality from the UI stuff, but it's hard to see how in practice you could get documents to be editable and rendered in the same way everywhere except by having everyone run the same binary to do the rendering, and there will inevitable be a hundred versions of that binary in use as new features get added.

Re: The Editable PDF Initiative

#102

Post by runxel »

Is this some weird kind of satire I don't understand?

Being read-only is the thing why we have PDF in the first place. If you want to do changes, go back to the program where it came from. It's simple as that! :)

Re: The Editable PDF Initiative

#104

Post by tom_mellior »

runxel wrote: post #102

Is this some weird kind of satire I don't understand? Being read-only is the thing why we have PDF in the first place. If you want to do changes, go back to the program where it came from. It's simple as that! :)

I've often needed to fill in PDF forms that were not using PDF's fillable form fields, or to paste in a scanned signature. This is an important use case for PDFs, and the people who send you these forms expect you to have a printer, nice handwriting, and a scanner. Instead you can do the whole thing in software, with only standard Ubuntu packages, but it can be painful for multi-page documents: I typically have to use a sequence of pdfseparate/edit each page in isolation/pdfjoin.

Re: The Editable PDF Initiative

#105

Post by IvanK_net »

I have been working on a PDF editor for several years. It is available inside my photo editor https://www.Photopea.com (press File - Open - choose a PDF file). People open 7 000 PDF files in it every day.

Often, a PDF contains just a single raster bitmap with the whole content rasterized. Also, text is often converted to vector shapes, which also makes it non-editable (as text). But it can open / save PDFs from Google Docs and other editors quite well.

Re: The Editable PDF Initiative

#106

Post by pge »

laurent123456 wrote: post #96

> PDF has long become the de facto format for exchanging print-oriented documents on the Web, and for a good reason: it works, and reliably so! Perhaps it's that way because it's read-only? If PDF files had to be generated in such a way that they can later be edited, things would get a lot more complex and probably less reliable. Also it feels like it's the wrong way to go about it, because no matter what PDF editing…

While this is mostly true, it should not be relied on. If the PDF is produced from a text document or report generator, then the text as well as the charts are easy to edit with any text editor (only requires decompressing the PDF first). Obviously different if the document is a scanned image, but just saving a Word doc into PDF does not make it a read-only file. The benefit of PDF is that it is (as the name suggests) portable, and one knows that the recipient will see exactly what was sent. With a Word or Powerpoint, formatting can show up different on different machines, fonts may not be available, etc.

Re: The Editable PDF Initiative

#107

Post by nxpnsv »

I prefer my PDF static, my meticulously edited LaTeX would be ruined by sticky fingers. However, something I much would like is better copy to clipboard from PDF. Non trivial input with tables and line breaks turns in to indecipherable alphabet soup...

Re: The Editable PDF Initiative

#108

Post by specialist »

PDF forensics would be nice.

I used to write print production software. I'm no stranger to PDF.

I recently had to fill out a PDF form and send it back. It took me way too long to figure out the "form elements" were just images. I kept trying to use different clients, thinking the content creator must have used some poorly supported corner case of the PDF spec.

So I printed the frikkin PDF, wrote on it, scanned it, and sent it back.

What could be easier?

Re: The Editable PDF Initiative

#109

Post by yeahtruck »

scarejunba wrote: post #78
ropiwqefjnpoa wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, now that nearly everything prints or saves to pdf format, I have little use for a direct editor. Just make sure my PDF's always open and always look the same. What I would like, is to make PDF's easy to markup with highlighting, circles, comments etc. Currently, even in Acrobat, it's not very intuitive.

Interesting. I recall saving as MHTML when I was young but it looks like that's not a thing now.

Internet explorer 5.5, or whatever, supported mhtml flawlessly, but then, Mozilla, or Netscape, it was called, didn't. So unless you're on ie 5.5 for life you're skits out of luck. Mhtml was flawless afaik but nothing else than ie 5.5 or whatever supported it. Mozilla which was Netscape sure did not. mhtml was the best thing. Except whenever using anything but ie 5.5 that is/was.

Re: The Editable PDF Initiative

#110

Post by Spooky23 »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #20
Spooky23 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve met a few people who feel passionately the way you do, and don’t get it. I worked with archivists on a few projects and never appreciated the dumpster fire that electronic documents presented. PDF is an amazing thing as you get an expressive format that preserves look, feel and content and will likely do so for the foreseeable future. Just the fact that the US Federal courts standardized on PDF for most filings…

Problem is that PDF does not preserve content in a machine readable format. It’s a one way street. Once converted to PDF you can’t convert to another format without losing a lot of content and formatting.

That’s like saying that a spreadsheet is no good because it isn’t machine readable.

PDFs are often display focused and difficult to parse, but it’s certainly possible to do so.

It’s success in the market as compared to a edit focused format like ODF underlined how important display consistency is.

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