Any have a recommendation for a good FOSS PDF reader for Linux.
The story of the PDF (2018)
81–90 of 97 posts
Re: The story of the PDF (2018)
#82Re: The story of the PDF (2018)
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't have an opinion on how good a format RTF is, but I kind of like it. As part of a Java project (a while ago), I studied the RTF format, partly by reading the spec, and partly through reverse engineering - by creating multiple incrementally larger RTF docs, starting from zero content, then adding a word, then a font style, then a paragraph, a table, etc. And after each addition, opened the RTF in a hex editor a…
In what ways is it preferable to ODT (OpenDocument format)?
RTF is a much simpler format than ODT. RTF source code resembles TeX at first glance; ODT is based on XML.
Unfortunately, it's not an open standard AFAICT.
Re: The story of the PDF (2018)
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't have an opinion on how good a format RTF is, but I kind of like it. As part of a Java project (a while ago), I studied the RTF format, partly by reading the spec, and partly through reverse engineering - by creating multiple incrementally larger RTF docs, starting from zero content, then adding a word, then a font style, then a paragraph, a table, etc. And after each addition, opened the RTF in a hex editor a…
Just out of curiosity, why the hex editor? Isn’t RTF just ASCII?
You are right, it is just ASCII text. Probably a brain fart there, sorry. I may have said that (hex editor) out of sheer habit of using one to inspect various formats. Or I may have used a text editor, if so TextPad, IIRC, since the project was on Windows (at least dev env was). It was years ago, so not sure.
Re: The story of the PDF (2018)
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't have an opinion on how good a format RTF is, but I kind of like it. As part of a Java project (a while ago), I studied the RTF format, partly by reading the spec, and partly through reverse engineering - by creating multiple incrementally larger RTF docs, starting from zero content, then adding a word, then a font style, then a paragraph, a table, etc. And after each addition, opened the RTF in a hex editor a…
In what ways is it preferable to ODT (OpenDocument format)?
sidpatil answered (sibling comment). The RTF spec was freely available (on MS's site and/or MSDN CDs then) and should still be around, at least on some sites, since RTF is still used a lot as an exchange format between word processors and even other software. So you can read the spec; it is straightforward.
RTF is to Word like CSV is to Excel. In fact, we generated RTF because the output was to be input to Adobe InDesign.
Re: The story of the PDF (2018)
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
In what ways is it preferable to ODT (OpenDocument format)?
RTF is a much simpler format than ODT. RTF source code resembles TeX at first glance; ODT is based on XML. Unfortunately, it's not an open standard AFAICT.
Right, I think it still may be a de facto standard from MS. It was so then.
Re: The story of the PDF (2018)
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
The irony is when I get told that people want an application to output PDF instead of Word, because it is read only. I always get amused by proving those people how to edit PDFs. It is the same logic that documents sent by Fax are legally binding but the same document sent by email not.
As someone that does this, it’s because they are harder to change for the average user, and that barrier also means ‘don’t do it’ in a soft sense. If I send a PPT you are almost saying to a client “you can edit this if you want, because I provided it in a format which is designed for editing rather than a format that was designed for view-only”. 99% of the time it stops the “Oh great, so when you took that presentati…
Yes - the dangers of sending a PPT to someone are real... your theme, your logo, someone else’s words. Unless a person is setup specifically to edit PDFs, there are limited tools to do so. Change to many words and spacing and alignment gets off. And it’s annoying.
Re: The story of the PDF (2018)
#88Man, this reminded me of XPS (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_XML_Paper_Specification), which I haven't thought about in ten years. Glad it never won.
Re: The story of the PDF (2018)
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just out of curiosity, why the hex editor? Isn’t RTF just ASCII?
You are right, it is just ASCII text. Probably a brain fart there, sorry. I may have said that (hex editor) out of sheer habit of using one to inspect various formats. Or I may have used a text editor, if so TextPad, IIRC, since the project was on Windows (at least dev env was). It was years ago, so not sure.
Aight :)
Re: The story of the PDF (2018)
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
pdftotext -layout
as with the hundreds of other converters, it probably will produce varying results