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Show HN: Generate pdf with gitbook or mdbook url

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Re: Show HN: Generate pdf with gitbook or mdbook url

#11

Post by maxerickson »

bob1029 wrote: post #8
chmod775 wrote: post #2

Sometimes I feel we're never going to be rid of PDFs. Everything can be converted into one, but you can't reliably convert from it. They're going to be here in 200 years.

I look at PDF like a virtual sheet of paper. Once you "print" to it, abandon any hope of getting things back out. This sounds like a bad thing, but we need some kind of way to say "this is the final presentation no matter what".

The conversion tools in Acrobat recover most content pretty well. It's not a one to one conversion, but it is plenty usable for putting in new documents or whatever.

Re: Show HN: Generate pdf with gitbook or mdbook url

#12

Post by cinntaile »

eviks wrote: post #7
srvmshr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have become a reliable way in office & legal processes around the world in terms of fixed layouts & content immutability (in a sort of layman view. Knowing Acrobat Pro exists & PDF editing too - but I'd argue that in majority of cases its not as trivial as modifying text file or markup sources, with intention to change or forge). Correct me if wrong but Word/LibreOffice layouts could change depending on the mach…

Word offers content immutability with its read-only mode, not sure how much layout change there is, though how much pixel perfection do you need in legal processes that are mostly pure text?

Sometimes vital images disappear and the layout gets messed up. I haven't had that happen to me with a pdf.

Re: Show HN: Generate pdf with gitbook or mdbook url

#13

Post by jowea »

bob1029 wrote: post #8
chmod775 wrote: post #2

Sometimes I feel we're never going to be rid of PDFs. Everything can be converted into one, but you can't reliably convert from it. They're going to be here in 200 years.

I look at PDF like a virtual sheet of paper. Once you "print" to it, abandon any hope of getting things back out. This sounds like a bad thing, but we need some kind of way to say "this is the final presentation no matter what".

Which is bothersome when you disagree about not needing to extract data or modify.

Re: Show HN: Generate pdf with gitbook or mdbook url

#14

Post by kibwen »

cinntaile wrote: post #12
eviks wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Word offers content immutability with its read-only mode, not sure how much layout change there is, though how much pixel perfection do you need in legal processes that are mostly pure text?

Sometimes vital images disappear and the layout gets messed up. I haven't had that happen to me with a pdf.

Though keep in mind that a given PDF might not embed the font that it uses (the PDF creator might not even have the legal right to embed whatever font they're using), so opening a PDF on other machines can cause them to be messed up if those machines don't have the correct fonts installed.

If you want literally pixel-perfect layout, you need to use a raster image format like PNG.

Re: Show HN: Generate pdf with gitbook or mdbook url

#15

Post by midasuni »

eviks wrote: post #7
srvmshr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have become a reliable way in office & legal processes around the world in terms of fixed layouts & content immutability (in a sort of layman view. Knowing Acrobat Pro exists & PDF editing too - but I'd argue that in majority of cases its not as trivial as modifying text file or markup sources, with intention to change or forge). Correct me if wrong but Word/LibreOffice layouts could change depending on the mach…

Word offers content immutability with its read-only mode, not sure how much layout change there is, though how much pixel perfection do you need in legal processes that are mostly pure text?

What version of word. PDF has many free implementations for both reading and writing.

Re: Show HN: Generate pdf with gitbook or mdbook url

#16

Post by dragonwriter »

civilitty wrote: post #5
zdw wrote: post #3

Or you can just run the target in Sphinx, and get better organized output with real table of contents and indexes - it supports a huge number of output formats: https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/usage/builders/index.ht... If you must use markdown, there's always https://mystmd.org which integrates directly into Sphinx, modulo minor bits of weirdness due to markdown being a mishmash of extensions.

I suspect this is for creating PDFs for ChatGPT, not for generating project documentation from source. That's the usecase that immediately came to mind, since a lot of Rust content (for example) is in mdbook format.

But gitbook and mdbook use markdown, which ChatGPT supports, too.

Re: Show HN: Generate pdf with gitbook or mdbook url

#17

Post by quirino »

srvmshr wrote: post #4
chmod775 wrote: post #2

Sometimes I feel we're never going to be rid of PDFs. Everything can be converted into one, but you can't reliably convert from it. They're going to be here in 200 years.

They have become a reliable way in office & legal processes around the world in terms of fixed layouts & content immutability (in a sort of layman view. Knowing Acrobat Pro exists & PDF editing too - but I'd argue that in majority of cases its not as trivial as modifying text file or markup sources, with intention to change or forge). Correct me if wrong but Word/LibreOffice layouts could change depending on the mach…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF/A

PDF/A is made especially for archival and long term preservation

Re: Show HN: Generate pdf with gitbook or mdbook url

#18

Post by eviks »

gilcot wrote: post #10
eviks wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Word offers content immutability with its read-only mode, not sure how much layout change there is, though how much pixel perfection do you need in legal processes that are mostly pure text?

Does read-only mode not suffer from some global settings? Also, what happens when the reading instance doesn't have all the used fonts for example?

What global setting?

Nothing happens, embedded fonts feature isn't exclusive to PDFs

Re: Show HN: Generate pdf with gitbook or mdbook url

#19

Post by eviks »

david_draco wrote: post #9
eviks wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Word offers content immutability with its read-only mode, not sure how much layout change there is, though how much pixel perfection do you need in legal processes that are mostly pure text?

If you have a 300-page legal document, and other sources reference passages, e.g., a paragraph on page 234. It would be unreliable if over the years or depending on the viewer it moves to another page.

that's why legal documents number the paragraphs, otherwise it's unreliable over the days you edit the document, no need to wait years for the app to change layout

Re: Show HN: Generate pdf with gitbook or mdbook url

#20

Post by srvmshr »

eviks wrote: post #7
srvmshr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have become a reliable way in office & legal processes around the world in terms of fixed layouts & content immutability (in a sort of layman view. Knowing Acrobat Pro exists & PDF editing too - but I'd argue that in majority of cases its not as trivial as modifying text file or markup sources, with intention to change or forge). Correct me if wrong but Word/LibreOffice layouts could change depending on the mach…

Word offers content immutability with its read-only mode, not sure how much layout change there is, though how much pixel perfection do you need in legal processes that are mostly pure text?

Ever observed how legal documents, product documentation, books etc., are typeset - with exact placement of comment boxes, US code reference/legal disclaimers/ barcode, precise footnotes or margin notes. Many of those are meant to be also machine readable when printed out. Exactness is a very pressing need.

I would recommend taking a good look again. It might answer you why it is preferred in some situation to be typeset in PDF over a format where text could reflow.

About the immutability in Word, it seems optional & not something by design. You can edit any *docx & 'Save it as' back. This feature doesn't absolve immutability as a principal feature.

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