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Ask HN: Why are PDFs still heavily used?

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Re: Ask HN: Why are PDFs still heavily used?

#31

Post by nbernard »

908B64B197 wrote: post #29
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PDF should be replaced... By a document format that displays statically rendered content in page size chunks, but with some of the backend problems removed. Stuff like, embedding text in a way that improves accessibility and copying text works nicely. Being able to right click copy images would be also nice.

Read-Only Docx solves pretty much all these issues.

Not really. Even Word for Windows and Word for Mac don't always render them identically, and in Office 365 it may be something else! And when you add LibreOffice Writer and the like into the equation, all bets are off.

Re: Ask HN: Why are PDFs still heavily used?

#32

Post by a2800276 »

PaulHoule wrote: post #20
a2800276 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

_all_ PDF features are complicated as hell apart from the "Export to PDF" feature of your word processor :D

My #1 complaint is that for all of the complexity there is no primitive to draw a circle in PDF, instead any ‘circle’ you see in a PDF is an approximation based on Bézier curves. (I thought I was uniquely untalented because I couldn’t draw anime characters with Bézier curves but when I looked at the resource packs for my favorite game I found my favorite illustrator couldn’t do it either.) I did a deep dive into PDF…

We tried to extract pseudo-code test procedures out of an ISO Standard and ended up developing heuristics of how to piece the text together based on the color of the syntax highlighting. Terrible, terrible format.

At the moment I'd like to add OCR text overlays onto scanned documents and just can get myself to deal with the format for longer than ten minutes until my brain gives up.

Re: Ask HN: Why are PDFs still heavily used?

#34

Post by dctoedt »

In the contract-negotiation world, signature versions of contracts are pretty much always Word documents that are saved to PDF and then "signed" electronically — a PDF document has more of a "feel" of immutability, even though altering a PDF is trivial for anyone with Acrobat Pro or equivalent, of course.

Re: Ask HN: Why are PDFs still heavily used?

#36

Post by ehutch79 »

ehutch79 wrote: post #33

It's a print format. They're meant to replicate the printed output. Sometimes I wonder how in touch Nielsen is with the real world.

Printing to letter size paper is also not the only output.

Where I work we routinely send PDFs to print houses. They're large format, as in paper size. Honestly I can't imagine sending an html/css bundle to a factory. How would you even specify different varnish layers, or embossed areas?

Re: Ask HN: Why are PDFs still heavily used?

#37

Post by 1attice »

Because of the power of metaphor.

A PDF is, in the popular consciousness, a digital form of paper. Anything that could be on paper? PDF.

Think of it as an FFI for the paper-based OS that our civ still runs upon (and may always.)

Like, network-based civ is kind of like a VM, and numerated paper documents (laws, etc.) are libc, and when you want to call out to the underlying reality, you use PDF.

Re: Ask HN: Why are PDFs still heavily used?

#38

Post by EnigmaCurry »

t-3 wrote: post #5

> the content is static Why are you saying this like it's a bad thing? Why would you want dynamic content in a document format? You can't give someone an epub and tell them to read page 197. You can't look at a webpage and know how it will look when you print it out. You also can't just netcat an ebook to your printer and get useful output. What alternatives do we really have? PDF is the most widely supported format…

> You also can't just netcat an ebook to your printer and get useful output.

Can you 'just netcat' a PDF to a printer? Which port number? How could I control features such as printing to both sides of the page? I imagined there would be some wrapping protocol (or conversion to postscript?) Does the printer that receives just a PDF binary, and no other control signal, just decide to use a default mode (like always printing single sided only)?

Re: Ask HN: Why are PDFs still heavily used?

#39

Post by Gordonjcp »

EnigmaCurry wrote: post #38
t-3 wrote: post #5

> the content is static Why are you saying this like it's a bad thing? Why would you want dynamic content in a document format? You can't give someone an epub and tell them to read page 197. You can't look at a webpage and know how it will look when you print it out. You also can't just netcat an ebook to your printer and get useful output. What alternatives do we really have? PDF is the most widely supported format…

> You also can't just netcat an ebook to your printer and get useful output. Can you 'just netcat' a PDF to a printer? Which port number? How could I control features such as printing to both sides of the page? I imagined there would be some wrapping protocol (or conversion to postscript?) Does the printer that receives just a PDF binary, and no other control signal, just decide to use a default mode (like always pri…

You can if it supports PDF, which lots of modern networked printers do.

Re: Ask HN: Why are PDFs still heavily used?

#40

Post by autoexec »

Arainach wrote: post #28
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PDF should be replaced... By a document format that displays statically rendered content in page size chunks, but with some of the backend problems removed. Stuff like, embedding text in a way that improves accessibility and copying text works nicely. Being able to right click copy images would be also nice.

Improving accessibility may be fair (I'm not familiar with the details), but in many cases PDFs are used for scenarios where the authors don't want the individual assets to be trivially extractable. Even if an advanced user can do so programmatically, a static layout is often a feature, not a bug. If the authors wanted the reader to be able to quickly pull out assets and recreate it they would distribute the content…

That's dumb, and pointless. Any image or text that is displayed on the screen will always be easily copied. There's no security in making copying an image take five clicks instead of two, it's just annoying. Not annoying because the five clicks are difficult or very time consuming, annoying because "why should I have to click 3 extra times just because someone foolishly thinks their content is being protected when it isn't". The analog hole is always there as a fallback too.

If someone wants something to be private, they shouldn't publish it. Once you put something out into the world, you should expect that people will do whatever they want with it.

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