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Tell HN: Adobe took down the PDF 1.7 specification from their site

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Re: Tell HN: Adobe took down the PDF 1.7 specification from their site

#11

Post by darrenf »

steerablesafe wrote: post #9
darrenf wrote: post #7

It's still available at this Adobe URL: https://opensource.adobe.com/dc-acrobat-sdk-docs/standards/p... " As distributed by Adobe after adoption as ISO 32000-1:2008, with permission of ISO. " [0] Not to mention ISO unsurprisingly host it, which I would also consider authoritative: https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:32000:-1:ed-1:v1:en [0] https://www.loc.gov/preservation/digital/formats/fdd/fdd0002...

Ah, thanks for the link. For some reason that link doesn't turn up in google search for me, however hard I try. Of course the ISO one is also authoritative, but not free.

Oh, mea culpa. Honestly I just found the opening page and didn't notice it needed payment to get to the rest of it. I naively assumed that since Adobe had published it with ISO's permission, it was free in both places.

Re: Tell HN: Adobe took down the PDF 1.7 specification from their site

#13

Post by steerablesafe »

darrenf wrote: post #11
steerablesafe wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, thanks for the link. For some reason that link doesn't turn up in google search for me, however hard I try. Of course the ISO one is also authoritative, but not free.

Oh, mea culpa. Honestly I just found the opening page and didn't notice it needed payment to get to the rest of it. I naively assumed that since Adobe had published it with ISO's permission, it was free in both places.

No worries! How did you find the "opensource.adobe.com" link? I can't hit it with google, even with aggressive searches like "site:opensource.adobe.com filetype:pdf". And I can't seem to navigate there from the main page.

Re: Tell HN: Adobe took down the PDF 1.7 specification from their site

#14

Post by steerablesafe »

zozbot234 wrote: post #6
jeffreportmill1 wrote: post #5

Off topic, but man is that document hard to use as a reference. Ironically, I wish they would publish it as HTML broken down by chapter and section. (I have used that document a lot to write a custom PDF generator and parser in Java, using a downloaded copy)

PDFs can support tables of contents with labeled chapters and sections. Not sure if the feature is standardized, but it's there.

The specification does have a hierarchical outline, and you can click on cross references too. Of course navigation can still be cumbersome, linking to chapters can also be awkward (tip: right click on outline element and copy link works in Firefox).

There are some problems of the spec though, and navigation is not the most pressing one. The spec is huge, support for less used parts is spotty in various PDF readers. It also has inaccuracies (not corrected in errata) and underspecified parts.

Re: Tell HN: Adobe took down the PDF 1.7 specification from their site

#15

Post by darrenf »

steerablesafe wrote: post #13
darrenf wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, mea culpa. Honestly I just found the opening page and didn't notice it needed payment to get to the rest of it. I naively assumed that since Adobe had published it with ISO's permission, it was free in both places.

No worries! How did you find the "opensource.adobe.com" link? I can't hit it with google, even with aggressive searches like "site:opensource.adobe.com filetype:pdf". And I can't seem to navigate there from the main page.

The loc.gov page came up first in my search, and links to the Adobe one :)

Re: Tell HN: Adobe took down the PDF 1.7 specification from their site

#16

Post by fivea »

jeffreportmill1 wrote: post #5

Off topic, but man is that document hard to use as a reference. Ironically, I wish they would publish it as HTML broken down by chapter and section. (I have used that document a lot to write a custom PDF generator and parser in Java, using a downloaded copy)

> Ironically, I wish they would publish it as HTML broken down by chapter and section.

I wish there was an EPUB version of the document. Do PDFs support reflowable content?

Re: Tell HN: Adobe took down the PDF 1.7 specification from their site

#17

Post by HWR_14 »

fivea wrote: post #16
jeffreportmill1 wrote: post #5

Off topic, but man is that document hard to use as a reference. Ironically, I wish they would publish it as HTML broken down by chapter and section. (I have used that document a lot to write a custom PDF generator and parser in Java, using a downloaded copy)

> Ironically, I wish they would publish it as HTML broken down by chapter and section. I wish there was an EPUB version of the document. Do PDFs support reflowable content?

I believe one of the selling points of PDFs was the absolute lack of reflowing content.

Re: Tell HN: Adobe took down the PDF 1.7 specification from their site

#18

Post by Cerium »

Anunayj wrote: post #8
darrenf wrote: post #7

It's still available at this Adobe URL: https://opensource.adobe.com/dc-acrobat-sdk-docs/standards/p... " As distributed by Adobe after adoption as ISO 32000-1:2008, with permission of ISO. " [0] Not to mention ISO unsurprisingly host it, which I would also consider authoritative: https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:32000:-1:ed-1:v1:en [0] https://www.loc.gov/preservation/digital/formats/fdd/fdd0002...

kinda funny you need a pdf reader to read the pdf specification :)

Yeah, how did they bootstrap the first pdf reader? /s

It must have been hard guessing at the spec until you could read it properly.

Re: Tell HN: Adobe took down the PDF 1.7 specification from their site

#19

Post by hunter2_ »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #3

It's possible they're reworking their CMS and that causes files to be moved (breaking links everywhere). Microsoft loves doing that with their developer blogs.

Not cool [0].

It's funny how CMSes tend to offer "clean URL" configurations (meaning that everything after the origin is 100% controlled by the CMS user) for requests served dynamically (database queries) but requests served statically (public files on disk) often end up containing implementation-specific junk (e.g., "/sites/" in the case of Drupal). The magic that makes clean dynamic URLs (rewrite everything that isn't a file to the boot script) should be expanded to make clean file URLs. Serving files would then need help from a script+db, but so what, that already happens for private files.

Obviously embedded assets that need to be fast (images, stylesheets, scripts, etc.) can't have a slow db query in the way. I'm only talking about files that are a first-class destination in the browser's address bar, like PDFs, and anything where the disposition is that it lands in your Downloads folder. Stuff that might be a search result or otherwise linked-to.

[0] https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI

Re: Tell HN: Adobe took down the PDF 1.7 specification from their site

#20

Post by innocenat »

hunter2_ wrote: post #19
colejohnson66 wrote: post #3

It's possible they're reworking their CMS and that causes files to be moved (breaking links everywhere). Microsoft loves doing that with their developer blogs.

Not cool [0]. It's funny how CMSes tend to offer "clean URL" configurations (meaning that everything after the origin is 100% controlled by the CMS user) for requests served dynamically (database queries) but requests served statically (public files on disk) often end up containing implementation-specific junk (e.g., "/sites/" in the case of Drupal). The magic that makes clean dynamic URLs (rewrite everything that is…

Drupal allow you to set private file mode, which has clean URL.
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