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The story of the PDF (2018)

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Re: The story of the PDF (2018)

#31

Post by yyyk »

alister wrote: post #6

I'm thankful PDF won, because otherwise I think it would have been Microsoft Word. There was a time when papers, books, resumes, contracts, etc. almost always came as Word. Does anyone else remember getting a book as preface.doc, chap1.doc, chap1a.doc, chap2.doc, subchap2a2.doc, and so on, and a mess of jpegs and gifs and trying to figure out how it had to be assembled, and discovering something was missing, or that…

We'd probably be using PostScript and maybe later XPS. Word never had a print-oriented format with exact layout.

Re: The story of the PDF (2018)

#32

Post by unnouinceput »

This has something of a misleading argument in it in the form that PDF is the "basis" for document world. PDF is not the basis.

Lemme explain: for each format there is a basis and there is the most used format. For sound that's .WAV / .MP3; for pictures that's .BMP / .JPEG (or .PNG if you're a purist).

And for documents that's .RTF / .PDF. You see a PDF is not the absolute basis, it's just the most convenient trade between usability and fidelity. Nobody except snobs wants pure .WAV files for their preferred songs and everybody uses .MP3 instead. If you want the absolute purest form of a document, you use .RTF

My 2 cents.

Re: The story of the PDF (2018)

#33

Post by gumby »

PDF has been bad news, as it embodies assumptions from an earlier age: how paper works.

I want to read flowable text that adapts to my screen and my size needs. I want to be able to reliably select and extract text. I don’t need something that apes an archaic IO system (printer+paper) with all its flaws and, when on scree, none of its advantages.

Re: The story of the PDF (2018)

#34

Post by Gibbon1 »

gumby wrote: post #33

PDF has been bad news, as it embodies assumptions from an earlier age: how paper works. I want to read flowable text that adapts to my screen and my size needs. I want to be able to reliably select and extract text. I don’t need something that apes an archaic IO system (printer+paper) with all its flaws and, when on scree, none of its advantages.

I use pdf's for data sheets. Last thing I want is flowable text. Also 25 years on in selecting and extracting text from html is hot garbage.

Re: The story of the PDF (2018)

#35

Post by sjy »

easton wrote: post #16
eat_veggies wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can pdf?

Given that PDFs can embed JavaScript, they can embed ad tracking software, yes. And Linux VMs. And a port of WinAmp.

I don’t think any of that is possible with the JavaScript APIs exposed (if any) by common PDF readers. I’ve tried to do useful things with JavaScript in a PDF and failed utterly. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32597283/can-javascript-...

Re: The story of the PDF (2018)

#36

Post by jcynix »

easton wrote: post #16
eat_veggies wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can pdf?

Given that PDFs can embed JavaScript, they can embed ad tracking software, yes. And Linux VMs. And a port of WinAmp.

Tracking is one possible problem. The other is, that JavaScript can modify the document itself, so a part of a contract for example might print out differently depending on conditions.

That's why PDF/A for archiving was created which disallows various components, cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF%2FA

Re: The story of the PDF (2018)

#37

Post by 867-5309 »

unnouinceput wrote: post #32

This has something of a misleading argument in it in the form that PDF is the "basis" for document world. PDF is not the basis. Lemme explain: for each format there is a basis and there is the most used format. For sound that's .WAV / .MP3; for pictures that's .BMP / .JPEG (or .PNG if you're a purist). And for documents that's .RTF / .PDF. You see a PDF is not the absolute basis, it's just the most convenient trade b…

if only .PDFs could easily be converted back to a useful raw format. parsing them is a bloody minefield, irregularly stuffed with proprietary metadata galore

Re: The story of the PDF (2018)

#38

Post by ar7hur »

adamnemecek wrote: post #13
hyiltiz wrote: post #11

It is a pity that DjVu[0] wasn't even mentioned; an open format that was superior to PDF in many ways[1], including better optimization, efficient storage. [0] http://djvu.org/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DjVu

It's crazy that Yann LeCun was involved in the creation.

Yes, Yann and another machine learning celebrity: Leon Bottou!

Re: The story of the PDF (2018)

#39

Post by [deleted] »

marcan_42 wrote: post #23
alister wrote: post #6

I'm thankful PDF won, because otherwise I think it would have been Microsoft Word. There was a time when papers, books, resumes, contracts, etc. almost always came as Word. Does anyone else remember getting a book as preface.doc, chap1.doc, chap1a.doc, chap2.doc, subchap2a2.doc, and so on, and a mess of jpegs and gifs and trying to figure out how it had to be assembled, and discovering something was missing, or that…

PDF objects within the file are usually compressed. That means if anything changes, the whole compressed binary blob changes. Other than compression and such encodings, PDF files are actually text files, with a drawing model largely based on PostScript but without the programming. If you want to diff them, use `mutool clean -d -a` to first turn them into pure ASCII text. That said, since it's a "baked" layout format,…

[deleted]

Re: The story of the PDF (2018)

#40

Post by gnicholas »

gumby wrote: post #33

PDF has been bad news, as it embodies assumptions from an earlier age: how paper works. I want to read flowable text that adapts to my screen and my size needs. I want to be able to reliably select and extract text. I don’t need something that apes an archaic IO system (printer+paper) with all its flaws and, when on scree, none of its advantages.

Agreed. Adobe's recently-announced [1] Liquid Mode for mobile devices is a step in the right direction.

1: https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/23/adobes-liquid-mode-uses-ai...

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