51–60 of 71 posts
One interesting thing I noticed is that the shortest conforming PDF 2.0 file clocks in at 254 bytes long (if you strip out the indentation): %PDF-2.0 1 0 obj >endobj 2 0 obj >endobj xref 0 3 0000000000 65535 f 0000000009 00000 n 0000000053 00000 n trailer > startxref 96 %%EOF This is 41 bytes longer than the shortest conforming file in PDF 1.0 through PDF 1.7, which do not require the ID entry in the file trailer dic…
The discussion around this being a non-free standard encumbered with license restrictions makes me wonder: is there an alternative for pixel-perfect rich document rendering? HTML needs sandboxing to be safe, rtf is barebones, and .docx has external dependencies.
The discussion around this being a non-free standard encumbered with license restrictions makes me wonder: is there an alternative for pixel-perfect rich document rendering? HTML needs sandboxing to be safe, rtf is barebones, and .docx has external dependencies.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Who would have thought that "international standards" that require payment don't work well? Who says that they don't work well? All of the manufactured goods that you own, and how they got transported (e.g., shipping containers, boats, fuel for boats, etc) are probably based a dozens of ISO (and ANSI, SAE, etc ) standards that had to be paid for. It's been the norm for about a century and helped build the modern wo…
Sure, but the current model is just ridiculous. 290 or so CHF* is probably less than the procurement bureaucratic overhead in a large corporation that bases an entire line of business on a given standard, yet is prohibitive for hobbyists and many open-source projects. A more reasonable model these days would probably be a per-seat license for an entire segment of the ISO library. As it is, I don’t even know if a give…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Specifically, lawyers advise their clients on how to avoid liability. The minimum liability comes from doing nothing, so the default advice is "Don't."
> The minimum liability comes from doing nothing You must be working in a very unregulated industry if that’s true!
"How do I not get sued for my new medical device?"
"Don't sell it to anybody."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep, it's a giant scam... Same for (a lot of) science.. You pay taxes to build universities, you pay taxes for professors and other educators paychecks, you pay taxes for research grants, and all that money from you is than used to 'discover' something, but you need to pay some private company to actually read the article. It's slowly changing, but still, a lot of science, for "poor people", is only available on pira…
Not just for poor people - I've had to pirate papers that I've co-authored.
> ISO 32000-2 was also, however, the first and only core PDF specification published exclusively — and only for purchase — by ISO, inhibiting its use and adoption over the last five years. Who would have thought that "international standards" that require payment don't work well? How many people are willing to spend a couple hundred CHFs to access the PDF specs? Also it seems insane to me that the PDF creator, Adobe,…
> Who would have thought that "international standards" that require payment don't work well? Who says that they don't work well? All of the manufactured goods that you own, and how they got transported (e.g., shipping containers, boats, fuel for boats, etc) are probably based a dozens of ISO (and ANSI, SAE, etc ) standards that had to be paid for. It's been the norm for about a century and helped build the modern wo…
I am extremely skeptical that everyone who has ever designed a glass bottle cap has paid for the glass packaging neck thread specifications. I know I sure as shit didn't the last time I had to make one. Come at me, bottlecap cartel.
Sure, there is a collective cost to develop and maintain standards, but making sure that they can be openly accessed afterwards should be considered as part of this cost burden.
I really could care less if something is "the norm" when it's still obviously antithetical to it's purpose. Saying "the norm" is always, always, always a red flag phrase that something is being held very far away from a natural state of balance.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but the current model is just ridiculous. 290 or so CHF* is probably less than the procurement bureaucratic overhead in a large corporation that bases an entire line of business on a given standard, yet is prohibitive for hobbyists and many open-source projects. A more reasonable model these days would probably be a per-seat license for an entire segment of the ISO library. As it is, I don’t even know if a give…
I run a business that extracts data from PDFs, even I couldn’t justify paying 290 CHF to buy a copy of the standard
When Apple eventually changed their implementation to be consistent with Adobe's, I gave up all further attempts as a waste of time.
My errata document is available under a $5000/yr corporate subscription agreement to my personal standards and practices library. Sorry, I do not offer memberships to individuals.
One interesting thing I noticed is that the shortest conforming PDF 2.0 file clocks in at 254 bytes long (if you strip out the indentation): %PDF-2.0 1 0 obj >endobj 2 0 obj >endobj xref 0 3 0000000000 65535 f 0000000009 00000 n 0000000053 00000 n trailer > startxref 96 %%EOF This is 41 bytes longer than the shortest conforming file in PDF 1.0 through PDF 1.7, which do not require the ID entry in the file trailer dic…
DRM fingerprinting
Anyway, I've since found an explanation in the PDF 1.7 spec. PDF files can include "file specifications" (file paths or URLs) to refer to other files. An ID can be added to a file specification for an external PDF, which the PDF reader can validate against the ID contained in the located file's trailer dictionary, to ensure that the external PDF is the expected one.
I guess "some workflows" must have gotten upset when trying to generate a link to a PDF file with no ID, so they finally required its presence in the spec.
The discussion around this being a non-free standard encumbered with license restrictions makes me wonder: is there an alternative for pixel-perfect rich document rendering? HTML needs sandboxing to be safe, rtf is barebones, and .docx has external dependencies.
Once you introduce any mildly interesting vector or typesetting feature, you will not get pixel perfection. Examples:
* You want to draw a circle. Antialiasing is desirable because jaggies look really ugly. Do you want to prescribe the exact antialiasing algorithm? What about other ones that are faster or more accurate? Which AA convolution kernel are you using - box, Gaussian, sinc?
* Which approximation algorithm will you use to draw cubic Bézier curves? I don't think there is a closed-form solution for them.
* You support affine transformations. Define a 10×10 square. Scale it by 1/100. Scale it by 100. What if, due to floating-point rounding errors, your square is now 9.999×9.999 and now renders to 9×9 pixels without antialiasing?
* You support automatic text wrapping. One renderer uses float32, looks at how wide each word is, and decides to break at some point in the sentence. Another renderer uses float64, looks at how wide each word is, and decides to break at a different point in the sentence.