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Preview in macOS Big Sur is destroying PDFs

annoying.technology

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Re: Preview in macOS Big Sur is destroying PDFs

#61

Post by fastball »

birdyrooster wrote: post #47
blacksmith_tb wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the author says it's "the result after modifying (removed a blank page) and saving that same PDF in Preview." So it's not enough to just view the file in Preview.app I take it, but you need to save it out (which still shouldn't strip anything extra, obviously, but is not what I thought was being claimed).

So you are saying that they overwrote their file and are upset that the file they overwrote is different from the new file? This is insanity. Clearly a bug in AABBY that it can’t read PDF saved in the standard spec. PDF is not a bitmap, it’s a script like HTML or JS. People understand browser incompatibility but some how this is unconscionable.

Other possibility is that Apple isn't saving to spec.

Or even more accurately, that neither are using the same spec because PDF just isn't that standardized.

Re: Preview in macOS Big Sur is destroying PDFs

#62

Post by birdyrooster »

refulgentis wrote: post #52
birdyrooster wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preview isn’t breaking files by reading them, as I understand it, people are saving files with Preview and over-writing their ABBY compatible pdf. Just because the last four bytes of a file name is “.pdf” doesn’t mean anything that opens files with that suffix will work. PDF is not a bitmap, it’s a script like HTML or JS. People understand browser incompatibility but some how this is unconscionable.

I see, the chain isn't as simple as bytes -> Preview -> unreadable bytes: rather, bytes -> Preview, edit -> unreadable bytes. Is that accurate?

Yep they are flushing new bits to disk when preview is instructed to save.

Re: Preview in macOS Big Sur is destroying PDFs

#63

Post by systemvoltage »

inetknght wrote: post #54
systemvoltage wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PDF is one of the best things IMO - it's like a docker container for documents. The way the original authors intended it to be, including fonts and all the things that go into making a document. For example, I personally like to purchase books that are in PDF format, not epub/mobi. I want to rely on professional typesetting from the publishers, not some front-end engineer's vision of what the ebook should look like a…

> I want to rely on professional typesetting from the publishers, not some front-end engineer's vision of what the ebook should look like and how it should be presented to the user. I, on the other hand, do not whatsoever trust publishers. PDF runs software and that means that everything under the sun including malware and DRM can run on PDF -- and indeed that has occurred many times. It should be a non-starter for a…

There are many other formats, a myriad of text formats from asciidocs to markdown. For embedded devices and such, they work great I presume.

Please don't mess with PDFs. 20+ year old technology that is shitty but works, I prefer keeping the status-quo.

Re: Preview in macOS Big Sur is destroying PDFs

#64

Post by lilyball »

birdyrooster wrote: post #41
avalys wrote: post #23

This is a clickbait, sensationalist headline. “Saving a PDF with Preview in Big Sur can corrupt OCR text added by a third-party program” is more accurate.

Did they save the file using Preview? If so that’s on them, they chose to write a pdf using Preview and that comes with all of the pitfalls of pdf compatibility. Does plain old PostScript have this problem?

Yes, they used Preview to modify the PDF.

Re: Preview in macOS Big Sur is destroying PDFs

#65

Post by zepto »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #26
zepto wrote: post #2

They are using software unsupported by the vendor and blaming Apple for the outcome. “ABBYY says they don’t support Big Sur yet, that’s fine. But Apple didn’t tell me that I can’t upgrade to Big Sur when I use ABBYY. I’d be a lot less angry if there was a changelog or release notes from Apple where it says there is a known problem with OCR’ed PDFs in Preview. Their software is broken, they need to tell me. I don’t ca…

So Preview opens a file, which is apparently valid per Preview (Preview handles and displays it correctly). After changes, preview then saves a file that is not valid per Preview (OCR text layer is corrupted). It is very difficult for me construe a situation in which this would not be considered errata in Preview. Even if ABBYY is writing unusual PDFs, it's popular enough software that this issue will be encountered…

“The idea that this behavior in a PDF reader can be excused because the software that generated the PDF was not approved for the operating system the viewer is running on per the vendor.”

Nobody is saying that. The suggestion is that the software that generates the PDF produces corrupt documents.

The fact that the vendor of that software doesn’t approve it for Big Sur suggests that they might be aware that there are problems.

Re: Preview in macOS Big Sur is destroying PDFs

#66

Post by [deleted] »

jcelerier wrote: post #60
systemvoltage wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PDF is one of the best things IMO - it's like a docker container for documents. The way the original authors intended it to be, including fonts and all the things that go into making a document. For example, I personally like to purchase books that are in PDF format, not epub/mobi. I want to rely on professional typesetting from the publishers, not some front-end engineer's vision of what the ebook should look like a…

> The way the original authors intended it to be, including fonts and all the things that go into making a document. cries in random PDFs that end up being printed with letters spaced by 1 cm

[deleted]

Re: Preview in macOS Big Sur is destroying PDFs

#67

Post by e40 »

Let's be real. Every single macOS release, until it reaches x.y.4 or x.y.5 is just in beta and you are the tester.

I upgraded to Catalina when it hit 10.15.6, and I watched for the year since the release all the comments and posts about the horrible things it was doing to their computer, files, apps, etc.

Apple supports the latest 2 versions of macOS. Always be on the "previous" one is my advice. Since my family and friends started following it, they are much happier and more productive.

Let the masses beta test.

Re: Preview in macOS Big Sur is destroying PDFs

#69

Post by fastball »

refulgentis wrote: post #52
birdyrooster wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preview isn’t breaking files by reading them, as I understand it, people are saving files with Preview and over-writing their ABBY compatible pdf. Just because the last four bytes of a file name is “.pdf” doesn’t mean anything that opens files with that suffix will work. PDF is not a bitmap, it’s a script like HTML or JS. People understand browser incompatibility but some how this is unconscionable.

I see, the chain isn't as simple as bytes -> Preview -> unreadable bytes: rather, bytes -> Preview, edit -> unreadable bytes. Is that accurate?

No, the bytes are still readable by Preview, it's just the OCR meta that is apparently no longer copy-pastable.

No reason why you can't just run this through ABBYY FineReader again and get the exact same OCR you got the first time, so I think "irreversible" is definitely a stretch.

Re: Preview in macOS Big Sur is destroying PDFs

#70

Post by zepto »

arvindamirtaa wrote: post #38
zepto wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No this is not correct. ABBY hasn’t updated their software for Big Sur, i.e. ABBY themselves say it hasn’t been updated yet and is not supported by them on Big Sur. That’s what unsupported means. It has nothing to do with whether Apple supports it.

I receive that PDF file that looks like any other PDF file. I open it with preview. It opens fine. I close it and open it again. It opens fine. I open it a third time and make a small arrow pointing to something and save it (as I would with ANY OTHER PDF). It breaks. I'm not using ABBYY. I've never heard of it. It's not on my system. It's just a PDF file that I got sent. Now what?

You’re a victim of ABBYY’s poor PDF generation, that’s what.

Nothing excuses ABBYY if their PDFs are corrupt.

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