PDF as a format is bad when you want to edit or extract text. But do we have an alternative to it that is as portable?
History of the PDF
21–30 of 58 posts
Re: History of the PDF
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually most pdfs are formatted in a good way and it’s easy to extract text. The stupid stuff is just copy encryption, which is just a stupid feature (because pdf viewers can ignore it) I have no idea why somebody hates pdfs for extracting data, when stuff like doc,xls (the old format) is clearly way worse. Pdf sometimes has its quirks but the 2.0 version clearly cleans up a lot of the messes
> I have no idea why somebody hates pdfs for extracting data, when stuff like doc,xls (the old format) is clearly way worse. Is this sarcasm? AFAIK, pdf is deliberately designed to not give a F about semantics. There is no way to determine what is part of what in a pdf document. All you got is association by adjacency. Hasn't it always been that way? Has something changed?
Most often the text runs you would extract from a PDF are in the order you would read the text. Probably because the word processor or application that created the PDF dumped the text into the capturing PDF context from its own text container that, in fact, contains the text in the order the word processor would display it (editing, searching, text selection in the creating app obviously benefit if the text container is in reading order).
When text is not in reading order within a PDF page it is often headers, footers, captions, callouts, block quotes....
There are I believe features in the modern PDF spec to allow for accessibility that would give you more structure to that raw text. I am not sure that this is a widely used feature when creating PDFs though.
Re: History of the PDF
#23PDF is the worst document format, apart from all the other formats. When developing software to read or process PDFs the PDF spec can always deliver a jump scare like no other spec. But to give it credit it broke Microsoft's stranglehold on documents, not completely, but back in the mid 2000s organizations no longer required you to submit things as word documents anymore.
But is the word XML format really bad nowadays?
Re: History of the PDF
#24>In 2020, Nielsen made the case again, writing, “After 20 years of watching users perform similar tasks on a variety of sites that use either PDFs or regular web pages, one thing remains certain: PDFs degrade the user experience.” Good luck saving a HTML version of any modern web page and being able to read it in twenty or thirty years time. HTML just wasn't designed for that.
I used to click "Print" (macOS) and save to file in (ironically for this article) PDF... does it work for you?
An issue with this is that the print CSS of most websites is an afterthought.
While it’s possible to alter the design with @media print as well as the page breaks, few websites do this. You are often left with broken layouts, empty pages, or nonsense page breaks.
Re: History of the PDF
#25Fun fact first version for PC was DOS version: https://winworldpc.com/product/acrobat-reader/1
I remember seeing this software on the university's computers, an acrobat.. and I was thinking.. WHAT is that software that I see in EVERY PC? I didn't know what PDF was at the time. I grew up with an Amstrad PC1512 (oh, and a family too) but never had to use Acrobat. Only GW-Basic, Zaxxon, Bubble Bobble, Defender of the Crown, and other super useful software ;)
The most 'complicated' software I used was Volkswriter!
Re: History of the PDF
#26Are there any real alternatives? I tried to make a conference poster with SVG - using Inkscape - and it was minor disaster that rendered differently in different programs/browsers, with some features entirely broken but I don't know of a third option..
Well, this is exactly why PDF was invented and is doing its job so well. To preserve a desired layout and very specific information on how something has to be outputted.
That comes with downsides, yes, but at its core it's just working fine.
edit: Third option would be to render your content as an image, but that comes with its own downsides.
Re: History of the PDF
#27PDF is the worst document format, apart from all the other formats. When developing software to read or process PDFs the PDF spec can always deliver a jump scare like no other spec. But to give it credit it broke Microsoft's stranglehold on documents, not completely, but back in the mid 2000s organizations no longer required you to submit things as word documents anymore.
That's the thing. Every PC, Mac, Android, iPhone can display PDF files. You can capture all elements of a website on one.
It just works.
Re: History of the PDF
#28For everybody complaining about the non-transformative character of PDF: There are several PDF standards out in the wild.
In the graphic industry we mainly use PDF/X files. These are very solid and precise in defining the layout and how objects are rendered.
For archiving purposes there's another standard, it's called PDF/A. Part of PDF/A is that you must be able to transform its text content back to Unicode.
So, if you're looking into being able to convert PDFs back and forth, you should probably use PDF/A. PDF/X files will drop that support to maintain the desired appearance as close as possible.
Re: History of the PDF
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I have no idea why somebody hates pdfs for extracting data, when stuff like doc,xls (the old format) is clearly way worse. Is this sarcasm? AFAIK, pdf is deliberately designed to not give a F about semantics. There is no way to determine what is part of what in a pdf document. All you got is association by adjacency. Hasn't it always been that way? Has something changed?
Most often the text runs you would extract from a PDF are in the order you would read the text. Probably because the word processor or application that created the PDF dumped the text into the capturing PDF context from its own text container that, in fact, contains the text in the order the word processor would display it (editing, searching, text selection in the creating app obviously benefit if the text container…
It's true that data is often written out in a logical order, but like you say, that's only because the program that created it was designed that way. I've definitely seen PDF files where tabular data is almost in a logical order but every now and then cells have been jumbled around.
But what I've definitely seen is documents where the characters are deliberately jumbled up and a custom font so that visually everything looks fine. I know this, because there was one specific case where I wanted to extract about 5000 words in a vocabulary list and it was hard to decipher. They'd used several such fonts in the single document as well, so there wasn't a one-to-one mapping of the text encryption. They'd also put a watermark under the list, so you also couldn't easily do OCR of the final screen image either.
Re: History of the PDF
#30So, reading the article is a bit weird. It's clear there's an anti-PDF bias from the start, with the implicit assumption that everybody hates reading PDF files. Actually, I don't because I get to read a well formatted document. They even say that it should only be used as a format for things to be printed, never as a document for people to read on a computer... and yet this is clearly meant to be read once on a scree…
You are not reading a PDF document, you are reading a visual representation constructed by a program which is made by people who tear their hair out.
PDF “specification” is not a specification, it only documents the happy path. It never states that behavior of Acrobat remains the holy truth, but in practice undocumented bug-for-bug compatibility is assumed. (We're talking about most basic, universally supported features here.) If ISO was worth their salt, they would at least try to codify the de facto behavior instead of stamping their name on some Adobe-provided document, then it would be horrible but fixed format. A collection of tests would be nice to have, too.
Of course, this “history” is just a promotional leaflet, which describes the “layman approach” they tried to construct. It's a fault not to mention that PDF was, and still is, a foundation of digital print industry, where big vendors solve compatibility problems for mere mortals, and therefore create unwritten rules of what should and shouldn't work.
It is also ironic that they praise the Web, but have to use Web Archive to link to the article from the ancient year of… 2020.