Is this something new ? I've been using it for long time.
Adobe unveils multi-year vision for PDF, introduces Liquid Mode
21–30 of 119 posts
Re: Adobe unveils multi-year vision for PDF, introduces Liquid Mode
#22"Used AI and ML", Christ, we need AI and ML to read a static document now.
> Christ, we need AI and ML to read a static document now
The article doesn't say that. This is like Reader Mode in your browser. It presents the same content in a different way based on an understanding of the document structure. You don't need to use it.
Re: Adobe unveils multi-year vision for PDF, introduces Liquid Mode
#23Isn't the whole point of PDFs that they (mostly) don't change? They represent content as laid out on a page. So, IMO this is neat if it's new tech for reading PDFs and extracting data from them (and maybe leveraging current under-used features to store more machine-readable information), but bad if it's about introducing even more complexity into the PDF documents. Perhaps 10 years from now we will have responsive PD…
This is more like a readability mode than a responsive website.
It's a button you click to automatically make a fixed-layout PDF fluid and easier to read on mobile.
You'd still author the document the same way without considering multiple device sizes. When the PDF needs to be reproduced faithfully (printing) it would still appear as the creator intended.
Re: Adobe unveils multi-year vision for PDF, introduces Liquid Mode
#24When your digital document format needs artificial intelligence to understand the content, it may be the wrong container for delivering content. I'll be sad to see content that should be delivered as HTML instead delivered as liquid PDF.
According to this article, nothing will be "delivered" as liquid PDF, because it's a feature of the reader app, not the document.
The point is that there are 30 years worth of existing, static, PDF documents - published as PDF for a potentially valid reason - which are frustrating to read on a mobile device.
Re: Adobe unveils multi-year vision for PDF, introduces Liquid Mode
#25The internet already has this. It's called HTML.
Liquid mode? It looks like a tool to reflow the content in existing PDFs, which are often intentionally not responsive. I don't see how this is similar to HTML.
The AI is required to reconstruct text order in legacy PDF files. Once you have the text, why wouldn't you render it in HTML?
Re: Adobe unveils multi-year vision for PDF, introduces Liquid Mode
#26When your digital document format needs artificial intelligence to understand the content, it may be the wrong container for delivering content. I'll be sad to see content that should be delivered as HTML instead delivered as liquid PDF.
I am old to remember that the initial publicity surrounding PDF touted it as the future of the web. A better HTML.
I laugh now as I laughed back then.
Re: Adobe unveils multi-year vision for PDF, introduces Liquid Mode
#27A better title would be an ”ambitious multi-year vision for Adobe Reader” as this isn’t changing the PDF format at all: it is simply a new, buzzword-compliant (AI! ML!) content-reflowing UI for the reader app.
Agreed. It seems that a lot of people aren't getting past the title, so now there are a bunch of misguided comments peppered all over the thread about needing to use AI to read PDFs, which is definitely not what the announcement is saying.
Re: Adobe unveils multi-year vision for PDF, introduces Liquid Mode
#28"Used AI and ML", Christ, we need AI and ML to read a static document now.
> Christ, we need AI and ML to read a static document now The article doesn't say that. This is like Reader Mode in your browser. It presents the same content in a different way based on an understanding of the document structure. You don't need to use it.
If you want content to be able to be presented in different ways (such as a Reader Mode) that reflect the document structure, there are far better options than PDF. This is Adobe trying to extend their moat. Just Say No.
Re: Adobe unveils multi-year vision for PDF, introduces Liquid Mode
#29There’s a lot to consider here, and I’m certainly encouraged by Adobe's long standing focus on consistent PDF view experiences. (At least compared to other formats) That being said, this feels somewhat like Adobe will turn PDFs into a form of markdown where the parser is a (variable?) machine learning algorithm. Done perfectly, the results could be great. Done badly and the results would be very painful.
> a form of markdown where the parser is a (variable?) machine learning algorithm
Sounds like a way to extend vendor lock-in, as nobody else will be able to implement the same algorithm with any assurance of interoperability.
Re: Adobe unveils multi-year vision for PDF, introduces Liquid Mode
#30[deleted]