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Preview in macOS Big Sur is destroying PDFs

annoying.technology

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Re: Preview in macOS Big Sur is destroying PDFs

#201

Post by kall »

markandrewj wrote: post #122
systemvoltage wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PDF is one of the best things IMO - it's like a docker container for documents. The way the original authors intended it to be, including fonts and all the things that go into making a document. For example, I personally like to purchase books that are in PDF format, not epub/mobi. I want to rely on professional typesetting from the publishers, not some front-end engineer's vision of what the ebook should look like a…

Generally the PDF copy of a book is designed to fit the format of the final printed book. The PDF is even often the deliverable sent to press. If you are using something like an e-reader, or a smartphone, the PDF layout often doesn't translate well. Typesetting is also normally also done for ePub/Mobi, but the layout is tailored to the format of the device that the document will be read on. Although there are times w…

I do believe this happens, but I have yet to read a book that looks even reasonably typeset on Apple Books on a phone with anything larger than default.

I know a PDF can‘t do that either, but that‘s the promise of these formats right? Between the most typography focused tech company and whatever the publisher puts into the file, they don‘t deliver.

Re: Preview in macOS Big Sur is destroying PDFs

#203

Post by FireBeyond »

mulmen wrote: post #134

I have learned to be scared of my MacBook. Seemingly safe behavior can cause permanent damage. It does completely unexpected things, apparently by design. I do not put my pictures in the ~/Pictures directory for fear of what the newest app will do to “improve” them for me. I fully expect it to apply lossy compression to my files without asking. This is after Photos or whatever it was called at the time mangled the da…

Multiple people are complaining that Big Sur is blowing out their speakers on the laptops.

I submitted something yesterday where Big Sur completely breaks DSC for all non-Apple monitors (and in some cases, even those).

Oof.

Re: Preview in macOS Big Sur is destroying PDFs

#204

Post by izacus »

TwoBit wrote: post #121
izacus wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why anyone treats PDF as anything but a write-once format is beyond me. sigh These kind of ignorant statemens really annoy me. The massive part of PDF spec is dedicated to editable features (annotations, form filling and digital signatures) which are used by massive industries daily because it brings them a lot of value. It's REALLY not that hard to think for a second and remember why having a single file which can…

And yet PDF re-writing keeps getting screwed up. Probably because it really is a bad format for this, with the pages of docs notwithstanding.

Sure, PDF re-writing is one of very clear non-goals when you read the spec. It's designed to be generated, always consistent and then later annotated and marked up.

And that doesn't make it read-only. It just makes it not suitable for live text editing just like a PNG isn't suitable for collaborative image work.

Re: Preview in macOS Big Sur is destroying PDFs

#205

Post by dialamac »

junon wrote: post #182
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

isnt including fonts basically code execution in and of itself?

Aside from potential vulnerabilities (bugs), no. Font formats are declarative. The various tables that define conditionals et al have no ability to run arbitrary code, and certainly do not have any concept of scripting and the like.

Ttf has bytecode for a stack interpreter with conditionals and loops (jump instructions and loop all). That’s declarative in the sense that all code is data, but i would say it is imperative.

Re: Preview in macOS Big Sur is destroying PDFs

#206

Post by pklausler »

systemvoltage wrote: post #36
xxpor wrote: post #21

Why anyone treats PDF as anything but a write-once format is beyond me. It's so finicky that I'm not shocked bugs like this happen. The only programs I'd be reasonable sure wouldn't screw it up are Acrobat itself, and pdflatex and friends. I think we need a multi-image container format. It could be something that's literally a bunch of jpgs/pngs/pick your poison in a tar container, and given a new extension. OSes wou…

PDF is one of the best things IMO - it's like a docker container for documents. The way the original authors intended it to be, including fonts and all the things that go into making a document. For example, I personally like to purchase books that are in PDF format, not epub/mobi. I want to rely on professional typesetting from the publishers, not some front-end engineer's vision of what the ebook should look like a…

Would you be happy with some kind of paginated image file format, if it were not significantly larger than PDF?

Re: Preview in macOS Big Sur is destroying PDFs

#207

Post by pklausler »

gpm wrote: post #50
ketamine__ wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What device do you use to read PDF's?

I've really been enjoying a remarkable tablet since I got it a few weeks ago. Great for taking notes, great for reading pdf's (and scribbling on them - which is surprisingly useful!), terrible for literally anything else.

I love reMarkable 2 for note-taking, but the fact that internal links in PDFs cannot be traversed makes it a non-starter for me as a technical document reader.

Re: Preview in macOS Big Sur is destroying PDFs

#208

Post by odyssey7 »

systemvoltage wrote: post #36
xxpor wrote: post #21

Why anyone treats PDF as anything but a write-once format is beyond me. It's so finicky that I'm not shocked bugs like this happen. The only programs I'd be reasonable sure wouldn't screw it up are Acrobat itself, and pdflatex and friends. I think we need a multi-image container format. It could be something that's literally a bunch of jpgs/pngs/pick your poison in a tar container, and given a new extension. OSes wou…

PDF is one of the best things IMO - it's like a docker container for documents. The way the original authors intended it to be, including fonts and all the things that go into making a document. For example, I personally like to purchase books that are in PDF format, not epub/mobi. I want to rely on professional typesetting from the publishers, not some front-end engineer's vision of what the ebook should look like a…

Knuth as a book author has written about this on his website.

“Warning: Unfortunately, however, non-PDF versions have also appeared, against my recommendations, and those versions are frankly quite awful. A great deal of expertise and care is necessary to do the job right. If you have been misled into purchasing one of these inferior versions (for example, a Kindle edition), the publishers have told me that they will replace your copy with the PDF edition that I have personally approved. Do not purchase eTAOCP in Kindle format if you expect the mathematics to make sense. (The ePUB format may be just as bad; I really don't want to know, and I am really sorry that it was released.) Please do not tell me about errors that you find in a non-PDF eBook; such mistakes should be reported directly to the publisher.”

https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/taocp.html

Re: Preview in macOS Big Sur is destroying PDFs

#209

Post by tbejn »

Aperocky wrote: post #97
lilyball wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they used Preview to modify the PDF.

So misleading. There are a chance that write goes wrong, but Preview is much more geared towards read than write. This doesn't excuse Preview, but its name is suggestive enough.

Actually, I think it's not Preview bug. I use gramarly plugin in safari, and double copy-paste issue is happening there also. It's something more generally broken. I run 11.1

Re: Preview in macOS Big Sur is destroying PDFs

#210

Post by smarx007 »

zepto wrote: post #65
jcrawfordor wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Preview opens a file, which is apparently valid per Preview (Preview handles and displays it correctly). After changes, preview then saves a file that is not valid per Preview (OCR text layer is corrupted). It is very difficult for me construe a situation in which this would not be considered errata in Preview. Even if ABBYY is writing unusual PDFs, it's popular enough software that this issue will be encountered…

“The idea that this behavior in a PDF reader can be excused because the software that generated the PDF was not approved for the operating system the viewer is running on per the vendor.” Nobody is saying that. The suggestion is that the software that generates the PDF produces corrupt documents. The fact that the vendor of that software doesn’t approve it for Big Sur suggests that they might be aware that there are…

This is ridiculous. When I read that FineReader is not supported on Big Sur, I understand it as I cannot run FineReader to _produce_ PDFs on Big Sur. But I expect Big Sur not to trash PDF files that were produced on Catalina, for example.

By the way, I was forced to purchase PDF Expert since a few years ago because of all kinds of problems with Preview (blurry text, wierd bugs with annotations, removed ability to print PDF with annotations and the list goes on).

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