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PDF is a publishing, rather than an editing format. It belongs in the same bucket as .mp3 and .jpg, rather than the .doc and .psd bucket. This is not about how

by pdpi 7y ago

PDF is a publishing, rather than an editing format. It belongs in the same bucket as .mp3 and .jpg, rather than the .doc and .psd bucket. This is not about how easy or how hard it is to modify a pdf, it's about the intended purpose. The fact that it's meant for publishing means we get to optimise it as such, both in terms of simplicity of the format itself, and in terms of the tools that interact with it. This makes consistent-ish rendering much easier. The features that would enable the format to be "editable" are also the sort of features that make consistency hard.

social_quotient 7y ago
Totally agree here. It would be nice to edit pdf the same way it would be nice to edit a jpg. But it’s the wrong tier to operate on. What people really need is more consistent access to source files aka design files. The only time I feel stuck needing to change a pdf or jpg is when I don’t have access to the “design file”. If reports that come out of systems need to be edited they should dump to excel or word and not pdf. While the P in PDF means portable I think it’s better thought of as “published” as in “published document file”.
blunte 7y ago
Consistency can be solved with hashing and cryptographic signatures. The user story here is that PDFs get sent around as forms to be filled out, and that poses a problem for non Mac users or users without sufficient technical skill. And since you reference mp3 and jpg, you surely know that both formats can be modified in ways that many people will not recognize as modifications. It just pushes the skill level up a bit. But there's always a technically capable person available for hire to modify one of the "permanent" formats you mention.
- brokenmachine 7y ago
  >PDFs get sent around as forms to be filled out, and that poses a problem for non Mac users Why is that a problem? I'm pretty sure there's a PDF reader app for every major platform.
  - blunte 7y ago
    Not all readers allow annotations or changes, so forms cannot be filled out on the computer. Instead they have to be printed, hand filled in, then scanned again.
DannyB2 7y ago
I think of PDF like PostScript but not Turing complete. I think of PostScript as an "ink on paper" format. While you can take apart the PDF / PS format, dictionaries, etc. It's not a high level representation format, like a word processor. It's a way of specifying how to draw vector shapes onto "paper".
wolrah 7y ago
Exactly. PDF is digital paper. The "print to PDF" metaphor is perfect. If you've printed something and decide you want to change it, you don't grab white out, you open the source file up and change it then print again. If editing PDFs is something you find yourself needing to do regularly, something is very wrong with the process that's leading to this. It may not be your fault, it may be an upstream party who should be providing you with the source material, but either way making PDFs easier to edit is not the correct solution.
m-p-3 7y ago
Agreed, and I prefer the LibreOffice approach to embed the original file within the PDF if the author decides to. This doesn't break the simplicity of the PDF, while making it easy to edit.

by pdpi 7y ago

social_quotient 7y ago

Totally agree here. It would be nice to edit pdf the same way it would be nice to edit a jpg. But it’s the wrong tier to operate on. What people really need is more consistent access to source files aka design files. The only time I feel stuck needing to change a pdf or jpg is when I don’t have access to the “design file”. If reports that come out of systems need to be edited they should dump to excel or word and not pdf. While the P in PDF means portable I think it’s better thought of as “published” as in “published document file”.

blunte 7y ago

Consistency can be solved with hashing and cryptographic signatures. The user story here is that PDFs get sent around as forms to be filled out, and that poses a problem for non Mac users or users without sufficient technical skill. And since you reference mp3 and jpg, you surely know that both formats can be modified in ways that many people will not recognize as modifications. It just pushes the skill level up a bit. But there's always a technically capable person available for hire to modify one of the "permanent" formats you mention.

brokenmachine 7y ago
>PDFs get sent around as forms to be filled out, and that poses a problem for non Mac users Why is that a problem? I'm pretty sure there's a PDF reader app for every major platform.
- blunte 7y ago
  Not all readers allow annotations or changes, so forms cannot be filled out on the computer. Instead they have to be printed, hand filled in, then scanned again.

DannyB2 7y ago

I think of PDF like PostScript but not Turing complete. I think of PostScript as an "ink on paper" format. While you can take apart the PDF / PS format, dictionaries, etc. It's not a high level representation format, like a word processor. It's a way of specifying how to draw vector shapes onto "paper".

wolrah 7y ago

Exactly. PDF is digital paper. The "print to PDF" metaphor is perfect. If you've printed something and decide you want to change it, you don't grab white out, you open the source file up and change it then print again. If editing PDFs is something you find yourself needing to do regularly, something is very wrong with the process that's leading to this. It may not be your fault, it may be an upstream party who should be providing you with the source material, but either way making PDFs easier to edit is not the correct solution.

m-p-3 7y ago

Agreed, and I prefer the LibreOffice approach to embed the original file within the PDF if the author decides to. This doesn't break the simplicity of the PDF, while making it easy to edit.