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Pdfsandwich

tobias-elze.de

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Re: Pdfsandwich

#41

Post by gala8y »

SergeAx wrote: post #34

I wonder if we (like in "humanity") can live without PDF at all? The format has so many flaws and problems it is practically unusable for any task except producing a paper copy, which is progressively obsolete with all the displays and e-paper readers and mobile phones.

Including security flaws, which is a big deal. I still have not figured it out how to sanitize pdfs in any reasonable way. (If someone has any suggestions here, please share.)

Not to mention need to save file in original Adobe Reader ("do you really want to overwrite this file?') every time you add a comment.

Re: Pdfsandwich

#42

Post by pawelmurias »

SergeAx wrote: post #34

I wonder if we (like in "humanity") can live without PDF at all? The format has so many flaws and problems it is practically unusable for any task except producing a paper copy, which is progressively obsolete with all the displays and e-paper readers and mobile phones.

A paper copy is still one of the most fun ways to read

Re: Pdfsandwich

#43

Post by ttyyzz »

SergeAx wrote: post #34

I wonder if we (like in "humanity") can live without PDF at all? The format has so many flaws and problems it is practically unusable for any task except producing a paper copy, which is progressively obsolete with all the displays and e-paper readers and mobile phones.

The idea of "getting away from paper" seems to be so challenging for many in its implementation that at that point they stopped thinking any further.

I work in a soewhat big corp. and PDF is viewed as the basis for the digitization of existing documents, be it for archiving or for the exchange of data with business partners. Also, we still have a fax machine in the company.

But, this is not just the opinion in my company. The public service also envisions sending and receiving digital documents using PDF as the future. E.g.: at the end of my digital tax return everything is summarized in a pdf (great), which then has to be signed and sent by post (lol).

Re: Pdfsandwich

#44

Post by jsilence »

I'm wondering, is it possible to make the invisible text layer visible and editable somehow? Would be great for proof reading and editing incorrect characters.

Re: Pdfsandwich

#45

Post by SergeAx »

pawelmurias wrote: post #42
SergeAx wrote: post #34

I wonder if we (like in "humanity") can live without PDF at all? The format has so many flaws and problems it is practically unusable for any task except producing a paper copy, which is progressively obsolete with all the displays and e-paper readers and mobile phones.

A paper copy is still one of the most fun ways to read

Not for me, since I got my first e-ink reader. Convenience and portability and access to content blows all the tactile and olfactory joys out of the water.

Re: Pdfsandwich

#46

Post by [deleted] »

SergeAx wrote: post #34

I wonder if we (like in "humanity") can live without PDF at all? The format has so many flaws and problems it is practically unusable for any task except producing a paper copy, which is progressively obsolete with all the displays and e-paper readers and mobile phones.

[deleted]

Re: Pdfsandwich

#47

Post by usb0 »

dustintrex wrote: post #38
SergeAx wrote: post #34

I wonder if we (like in "humanity") can live without PDF at all? The format has so many flaws and problems it is practically unusable for any task except producing a paper copy, which is progressively obsolete with all the displays and e-paper readers and mobile phones.

PDF is quite good at producing static output that will render predictably, and there aren't really any common alternatives for this. PDF becomes very problematic when you attempt to do anything else with it though, like edit it or parse it as input.

yeah, consistency is very important in design. imagine sending your boss PSD or HTML files but their machines don't have fonts you use in your design.

Re: Pdfsandwich

#48

Post by capableweb »

usb0 wrote: post #47
dustintrex wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PDF is quite good at producing static output that will render predictably, and there aren't really any common alternatives for this. PDF becomes very problematic when you attempt to do anything else with it though, like edit it or parse it as input.

yeah, consistency is very important in design. imagine sending your boss PSD or HTML files but their machines don't have fonts you use in your design.

Just like with PDF, you can embed fonts in HTML so everyone has the same font.

But yeah, agree with your overall point, PDF is currently the easiest, most well-supported way of sending stuff that doesn't fudge around with the design. What you send someone is almost guaranteed to be what they see, unless they use some weird PDF reader.

Re: Pdfsandwich

#49

Post by diarrhea »

hobofan wrote: post #33
PureParadigm wrote: post #16

Using Pdfsandwich in college was like having a superpower. We would often be given PDFs with only image data. While my peers were still scrolling through and copying quotes by hand, I was there in seconds with Ctrl-F to find and copy/paste. Once you have text in the PDF, you can use any sort of text analysis tools. You can use tools to convert it to plain text and grep through, or anything else you want. That being s…

On an even more macro level I've had a great experience with ripgrep-all[0], which uses Tesseract internally. I have e.g. a directory with all weekly lecture slides for one lecture, and can directly find where (both file and page) we learned something related to photosynthesis via `rga photoshynthesis`. [0]: https://github.com/phiresky/ripgrep-all

rga is one of my favorite tools ever.

Re: Pdfsandwich

#50

Post by javajosh »

capableweb wrote: post #48
usb0 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, consistency is very important in design. imagine sending your boss PSD or HTML files but their machines don't have fonts you use in your design.

Just like with PDF, you can embed fonts in HTML so everyone has the same font. But yeah, agree with your overall point, PDF is currently the easiest, most well-supported way of sending stuff that doesn't fudge around with the design. What you send someone is almost guaranteed to be what they see, unless they use some weird PDF reader.

you can embed fonts in HTML so everyone has the same font.

How often do people embed fonts in the html via a font-face + base64 ttf or woff data-uri?

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