4 ms·

Serious question: what is the reason for the existence of the PDF format today? From wikipedia: "to present documents, including text formatting and images, in

Serious question: what is the reason for the existence of the PDF format today? From wikipedia: "to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems." I wish W3C would come up with container format for a HTML webpage that would pack all assets and run in any standard browser.

jrochkind1 6y ago
HTML was never designed to be "device independent", display pixel-perfect the same everywhere regardless of user-agent. PDF was, in relationship with printing. I think this is clearly a quality people want (whether they "should" or not), so it's unlikely they will stop using PDF unless there's another thing that can provide that quality. I don't think HTML is the right avenue for it. I would say the ePub format comes pretty close to what you are asking for though, a container format for HTML webpage that would pack all assets and run in... well, standards-based software from several different sources. I'm not sure if browsers will actually display ePub or not? They presumably could fairly easily if they had a desire to, since it's all standard html/web technology. ePub is not W3C maintained though, I don't think. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB It has moved in on PDF territory in some limited areas -- mainly ebooks of course, the use-case it's focused on. I think this is because it turns out "pixel perfect same everywhere" is a clear DOWNSIDE for ebooks, you want them to be formatted properly for your device's screen size, not have the same page size everywhere. So while PDFs were sometimes used for this, it works poorly enough for the user that another solution was demanded. (and thankfully we got an open standards one). Most uses of PDF still work "good enough" for most users (certainly not all; there can be accessibilty probelms). Even if it's a nightmare under the hood, PDFs generally work "good enough" for most developers too (again not all). It's a lot of investment to reproduce to replace, it would require popular use cases failing hard probably, with money to made from serving them better.

jrochkind1 6y ago

HTML was never designed to be "device independent", display pixel-perfect the same everywhere regardless of user-agent. PDF was, in relationship with printing. I think this is clearly a quality people want (whether they "should" or not), so it's unlikely they will stop using PDF unless there's another thing that can provide that quality. I don't think HTML is the right avenue for it. I would say the ePub format comes pretty close to what you are asking for though, a container format for HTML webpage that would pack all assets and run in... well, standards-based software from several different sources. I'm not sure if browsers will actually display ePub or not? They presumably could fairly easily if they had a desire to, since it's all standard html/web technology. ePub is not W3C maintained though, I don't think. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB It has moved in on PDF territory in some limited areas -- mainly ebooks of course, the use-case it's focused on. I think this is because it turns out "pixel perfect same everywhere" is a clear DOWNSIDE for ebooks, you want them to be formatted properly for your device's screen size, not have the same page size everywhere. So while PDFs were sometimes used for this, it works poorly enough for the user that another solution was demanded. (and thankfully we got an open standards one). Most uses of PDF still work "good enough" for most users (certainly not all; there can be accessibilty probelms). Even if it's a nightmare under the hood, PDFs generally work "good enough" for most developers too (again not all). It's a lot of investment to reproduce to replace, it would require popular use cases failing hard probably, with money to made from serving them better.