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I would prefer a “kill PDF” initiative :). PDF is a terrible format for almost all purposes it’s used for. It doesn’t adapt to screen sizes, is hard to parse an

I would prefer a “kill PDF” initiative :). PDF is a terrible format for almost all purposes it’s used for. It doesn’t adapt to screen sizes, is hard to parse and loses a ton of information from source documents. I don’t think we could have picked a much worse file format for widespread use.

jolmg 7y ago
What's a better format for displaying and printing documents consistently and with selectable text? > It doesn’t adapt to screen sizes That is a feature. I expect my PDFs to display with pixel-perfect consistency everywhere. There are other formats that adapt to screen sizes. HTML is good for that, if we ignore how people break that with styling.
- happytoexplain 7y ago
  I would argue that PDF is nightmarishly bad - truly one of the worst formats ever created on almost all fronts - but it's the best and most featured option for its use case. Depressingly, I find this is true about a lot of things. I don't know what the answer is.
  - segfaultbuserr 7y ago
    Worse is better. http://dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html http://dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    I’ve met a few people who feel passionately the way you do, and don’t get it. I worked with archivists on a few projects and never appreciated the dumpster fire that electronic documents presented. PDF is an amazing thing as you get an expressive format that preserves look, feel and content and will likely do so for the foreseeable future. Just the fact that the US Federal courts standardized on PDF for most filings will ensure that it is a viable format for decades or more.
    - Ididntdothis 7y ago
      Problem is that PDF does not preserve content in a machine readable format. It’s a one way street. Once converted to PDF you can’t convert to another format without losing a lot of content and formatting.
      - naniwaduni 7y ago
        This is true of practically all formats.
        Ididntdothis 7y ago
        It’s much truer for PDF than for other formats. The only format I could think of that’s worse would be plain images.
      - e1ven 7y ago
        That's exactly what I like about it. My ideal PDF is essentially a PNG file with selectable/searchable text. It's a great WORM format. Every added feature makes it worse.
        jolmg 7y ago
        Why is it desireable for it to not be machine readable? What could possibly be the advantage in that?
        e1ven 7y ago
        Because I don't want anything to try to reflow the text, or adjust the kerning, or modify to use system fonts. There are great systems for those already. When I want a PDF, it's because I want a format that I know is always going to look the same. A PDF is a great archive format. It's perfect for a scan of a document, or a printout. I never want my viewer to add anything to it, I never want it to detect anything, I never want it to adjust anything. Just render it exactly the same way, every time.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  “printing documents consistently and with selectable text” It’s fine for that purpose but it’s terrible for eBooks, manuals, science papers and a lot of other stuff it’s used for. Some HTML with everything in one file would be much better in my opinion. Something like CHM maybe which MS used to use for help files.
  - applecrazy 7y ago
    > some HTML with everything in one file You just described the ePub format. It’s a ZIP file with HTML docs in it.
    - Ididntdothis 7y ago
      I didn’t know that but ePub is great for ebooks and manuals.
  - mcswell 7y ago
    We've printed several grammars of languages south Asia from PDFs, and we've also used the PDFs in the absence of the printed grammars. Some of these languages use the Arabic script, generally the nasta'liq version. The Arabic language usually uses the naskh version of the Arabic script, and it can be represented reasonably well with any of a variety of fonts. But nasta'liq is a different beast, and until very recently typesetting it was virtually impossible. (Urdu newspapers were hand written by calligraphers, and reproduced using photo-offset, well past the milenium.) There are now reasonably good nasta'liq fonts (SIL offers a good one), which we used to produce our PDFs (and then embedded the font in the PDF for portability). You still won't get good nasta'liq in HTML unless you happen to have the right rendering engine + the right font. In short, I don't think we could have typeset these grammars without PDF. We also did a grammar of Dhivehi, which is the only language in the world that uses the Thaana script. Thaana can be typeset quite easily--if you happen to have the right font. Most people don't. I guess the same thing holds if you happen to be publishing grammars of languages that used cuneiform--not many computer systems have cuneiform fonts!
    - NieDzejkob 7y ago
- microcolonel 7y ago
  The claim that text is selectable in PDFs is often dubious.
  - jolmg 7y ago
    Well, I meant that the format supports it. I merely mentioned it so nobody would reply with something like PNG.
  - klodolph 7y ago
    The problem is that text selection relies on the PDF generation to be done in some kind of sensible fashion. There are so many ways to generate PDFs, and in some of them, the actual text is mangled or its order is mangled before it gets to the PDF generation step itself. But in general, if you generate the PDF with an authoring tool like LaTeX or InDesign, or if you print to PDF from a webpage or document, it's going to be selectable in a sensible way.
  - abrookewood 7y ago
    Not sure about other apps, but the paid reader I use (1) includes an OCR function that adds a text layer to the document. Seems to work pretty well. (1) https://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-editor https://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-editor
danso 7y ago
Some documents aren't meant to adapt to screen sizes gracefully, particularly ones where layout and typesetting are important/mandated.
- happytoexplain 7y ago
  Yes, but an adaptive format could allow static layout, while a static format inherently can not allow an adaptive layout.
  - danso 7y ago
    And what is this adaptive format? Is it HTML? The FAQ addresses why this initiative is skeptical of using HTML: https://editablepdf.org/faq/ https://editablepdf.org/faq/ > Why not use web standards, such as HTML/CSS? > We do use the relevant parts of HTML and CSS, where appropriate. But web standards do not provide for specification of the layout of the document in a robust way, which is guaranteed not to reflow when opened on other systems. Furthermore, browser technologies are a moving target, with implementations changing very rapidly. Therefore, they do not provide a suitable basis for archival documents.
    - microcolonel 7y ago
      Indeed, advance needs to be measured in the integer units of the font, if you want stable line breaks.
xvilka 7y ago
Well, the idea behind PDF is good, just revamping the format will help a lot - remove the unnecessary features, ambiguities, remove old and legacy features, etc.
- klodolph 7y ago
  I'm not sure that is so necessary. PDF is kind of a cleaned-up version of PostScript to begin with. Which features or ambiguities would you remove?
  - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    If you were starting from scratch it would look quite different, the obvious change would be Unicode only. In fact it would probably look much like XPS.
    - klodolph 7y ago
      Isn’t the main problem with XPS just software support, though?
      - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
        That's huge though, you need to know you will be able to open your documents in a decade or more.
        klodolph 7y ago
        I don’t understand your position at all. If you want to open your documents in a decade or more, redesigning a “cleaner” PDF would only make that less likely. If you want something cleaner than PDF, then XPS is already here. I don’t understand what scenario we’d have where designing a completely new format would give us better software support. So, the reason I’d see for designing a new format is if neither XPS nor PDF are good enough for some application.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
fortran77 7y ago
I use PDFs all day long. It's great. I know people will see documents the same as I do.
marcus_holmes 7y ago
Also, can we have an open standard for this, please? Not a proprietary format owned by someone. Just because they're not currently charging for it, doesn't mean they can't.
- UglyToad 7y ago
  As far as I'm aware PDF is an open standard? Happy to be corrected if wrong but the standard (2.0) is now published by ISO, which annoyingly enough means they charge for it which at least Adobe weren't (<2.0).
  - marcus_holmes 7y ago
    ahh, my bad then. I thought it was still owned by Adobe.
leni536 7y ago
PDF is the most complete open vectorgraphic format. SVG comes close, but client support is all over the place. Browser support is attrocious.
lxgr 7y ago
> for almost all purposes it’s used for So we should kill a format because it is used for something it was never intended for? How is the lack of a widely compatible, self-contained markup-plus-resources format PDFs fault?

jolmg 7y ago

What's a better format for displaying and printing documents consistently and with selectable text? > It doesn’t adapt to screen sizes That is a feature. I expect my PDFs to display with pixel-perfect consistency everywhere. There are other formats that adapt to screen sizes. HTML is good for that, if we ignore how people break that with styling.

happytoexplain 7y ago
I would argue that PDF is nightmarishly bad - truly one of the worst formats ever created on almost all fronts - but it's the best and most featured option for its use case. Depressingly, I find this is true about a lot of things. I don't know what the answer is.
- segfaultbuserr 7y ago
  Worse is better. http://dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html http://dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html
- Spooky23 7y ago
  I’ve met a few people who feel passionately the way you do, and don’t get it. I worked with archivists on a few projects and never appreciated the dumpster fire that electronic documents presented. PDF is an amazing thing as you get an expressive format that preserves look, feel and content and will likely do so for the foreseeable future. Just the fact that the US Federal courts standardized on PDF for most filings will ensure that it is a viable format for decades or more.
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago
    Problem is that PDF does not preserve content in a machine readable format. It’s a one way street. Once converted to PDF you can’t convert to another format without losing a lot of content and formatting.
    - naniwaduni 7y ago
      This is true of practically all formats.
      - Ididntdothis 7y ago
        It’s much truer for PDF than for other formats. The only format I could think of that’s worse would be plain images.
    - e1ven 7y ago
      That's exactly what I like about it. My ideal PDF is essentially a PNG file with selectable/searchable text. It's a great WORM format. Every added feature makes it worse.
      - jolmg 7y ago
        Why is it desireable for it to not be machine readable? What could possibly be the advantage in that?
        e1ven 7y ago
        Because I don't want anything to try to reflow the text, or adjust the kerning, or modify to use system fonts. There are great systems for those already. When I want a PDF, it's because I want a format that I know is always going to look the same. A PDF is a great archive format. It's perfect for a scan of a document, or a printout. I never want my viewer to add anything to it, I never want it to detect anything, I never want it to adjust anything. Just render it exactly the same way, every time.
Ididntdothis 7y ago
“printing documents consistently and with selectable text” It’s fine for that purpose but it’s terrible for eBooks, manuals, science papers and a lot of other stuff it’s used for. Some HTML with everything in one file would be much better in my opinion. Something like CHM maybe which MS used to use for help files.
- applecrazy 7y ago
  > some HTML with everything in one file You just described the ePub format. It’s a ZIP file with HTML docs in it.
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago
    I didn’t know that but ePub is great for ebooks and manuals.
- mcswell 7y ago
  We've printed several grammars of languages south Asia from PDFs, and we've also used the PDFs in the absence of the printed grammars. Some of these languages use the Arabic script, generally the nasta'liq version. The Arabic language usually uses the naskh version of the Arabic script, and it can be represented reasonably well with any of a variety of fonts. But nasta'liq is a different beast, and until very recently typesetting it was virtually impossible. (Urdu newspapers were hand written by calligraphers, and reproduced using photo-offset, well past the milenium.) There are now reasonably good nasta'liq fonts (SIL offers a good one), which we used to produce our PDFs (and then embedded the font in the PDF for portability). You still won't get good nasta'liq in HTML unless you happen to have the right rendering engine + the right font. In short, I don't think we could have typeset these grammars without PDF. We also did a grammar of Dhivehi, which is the only language in the world that uses the Thaana script. Thaana can be typeset quite easily--if you happen to have the right font. Most people don't. I guess the same thing holds if you happen to be publishing grammars of languages that used cuneiform--not many computer systems have cuneiform fonts!
  - NieDzejkob 7y ago
microcolonel 7y ago
The claim that text is selectable in PDFs is often dubious.
- jolmg 7y ago
  Well, I meant that the format supports it. I merely mentioned it so nobody would reply with something like PNG.
- klodolph 7y ago
  The problem is that text selection relies on the PDF generation to be done in some kind of sensible fashion. There are so many ways to generate PDFs, and in some of them, the actual text is mangled or its order is mangled before it gets to the PDF generation step itself. But in general, if you generate the PDF with an authoring tool like LaTeX or InDesign, or if you print to PDF from a webpage or document, it's going to be selectable in a sensible way.
- abrookewood 7y ago
  Not sure about other apps, but the paid reader I use (1) includes an OCR function that adds a text layer to the document. Seems to work pretty well. (1) https://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-editor https://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-editor

danso 7y ago

Some documents aren't meant to adapt to screen sizes gracefully, particularly ones where layout and typesetting are important/mandated.

happytoexplain 7y ago
Yes, but an adaptive format could allow static layout, while a static format inherently can not allow an adaptive layout.
- danso 7y ago
  And what is this adaptive format? Is it HTML? The FAQ addresses why this initiative is skeptical of using HTML: https://editablepdf.org/faq/ https://editablepdf.org/faq/ > Why not use web standards, such as HTML/CSS? > We do use the relevant parts of HTML and CSS, where appropriate. But web standards do not provide for specification of the layout of the document in a robust way, which is guaranteed not to reflow when opened on other systems. Furthermore, browser technologies are a moving target, with implementations changing very rapidly. Therefore, they do not provide a suitable basis for archival documents.
  - microcolonel 7y ago
    Indeed, advance needs to be measured in the integer units of the font, if you want stable line breaks.

xvilka 7y ago

Well, the idea behind PDF is good, just revamping the format will help a lot - remove the unnecessary features, ambiguities, remove old and legacy features, etc.

klodolph 7y ago
I'm not sure that is so necessary. PDF is kind of a cleaned-up version of PostScript to begin with. Which features or ambiguities would you remove?
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  If you were starting from scratch it would look quite different, the obvious change would be Unicode only. In fact it would probably look much like XPS.
  - klodolph 7y ago
    Isn’t the main problem with XPS just software support, though?
    - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
      That's huge though, you need to know you will be able to open your documents in a decade or more.
      - klodolph 7y ago
        I don’t understand your position at all. If you want to open your documents in a decade or more, redesigning a “cleaner” PDF would only make that less likely. If you want something cleaner than PDF, then XPS is already here. I don’t understand what scenario we’d have where designing a completely new format would give us better software support. So, the reason I’d see for designing a new format is if neither XPS nor PDF are good enough for some application.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

fortran77 7y ago

I use PDFs all day long. It's great. I know people will see documents the same as I do.

marcus_holmes 7y ago

Also, can we have an open standard for this, please? Not a proprietary format owned by someone. Just because they're not currently charging for it, doesn't mean they can't.

UglyToad 7y ago
As far as I'm aware PDF is an open standard? Happy to be corrected if wrong but the standard (2.0) is now published by ISO, which annoyingly enough means they charge for it which at least Adobe weren't (<2.0).
- marcus_holmes 7y ago
  ahh, my bad then. I thought it was still owned by Adobe.

leni536 7y ago

PDF is the most complete open vectorgraphic format. SVG comes close, but client support is all over the place. Browser support is attrocious.

lxgr 7y ago

> for almost all purposes it’s used for So we should kill a format because it is used for something it was never intended for? How is the lack of a widely compatible, self-contained markup-plus-resources format PDFs fault?