4 ms·

Can we just step away from PDFs to a better standard? Every time I deal with PDFs or I have to on behalf of my parents it is a true waste of time and resources

Can we just step away from PDFs to a better standard? Every time I deal with PDFs or I have to on behalf of my parents it is a true waste of time and resources - there has to be a better way.

kibwen 6y ago
Sure you can: find an ideologically motivated tech billionaire, buy Adobe, release a new version of PDF and make the spec an inaccessible trade secret, aggressively legislate against anyone who attempts to implement it, start charging for Reader, increase the price by a compounding 2% every year, and put that money towards a foundation with a purpose of openly designing and implementing a better, freely-licensed replacement. I predict this would only take 20 to 30 years. :)
- boringg 6y ago
  Sounds like you've been thinking about this. You don't happen to be an ideologically motivated billionaire who happens to think the best thing for humanity and return on capital is to rebuild the pdf spec do you? * fingers crossed
rossdavidh 6y ago
Just in case you were looking for an actual answer to your question: "no".
jrochkind1 6y ago
Well, no, we can't just do that. But it's nice to dream.
- topspin 6y ago
  Well, yes, we can, but the outcome will be far worse. The naive imagine "something better." The real world will interpret "better" as 27 half baked alternatives, 2 of which will work on something other than Chrome running on Windows.
  - boringg 6y ago
    Agree with this - minus the naive part. I think you can dream and you can have "something better" but you risk all the good work that has been put in already which might put you in a worse spot. If you ran a hypothetical model on what the future outcomes might be the likelihood of something better is probably pretty small. That said, we can always dream.
  - jrochkind1 6y ago
    OK sure, let's just do it then. Let's start... now. Is it happening yet? Can't we just do it?
Semiapies 6y ago
At the very least, you need a replacement that's technically better, works well cross-platform, has a layman-acceptable UI, and supports 99.999%+ of all the use cases PDFs currently supports. It also has to convert old PDFs into the new format. Then, you have to worry about market share and acceptance.
andylynch 6y ago
One of the reasons PDFs are still so common is they do their job pretty well, i.e. accurately displaying documents. Any alternative would need some very compelling reason to use it instead. Take Microsoft’s XPS which I think is it’s closest rival. It is an open standard based on XML. It’s built into Windows, Office, and many printers support it natively along with major software vendors, but I can’t think of a single time I’ve come across an XPS file online.

Can we just step away from PDFs to a better standard? Every time I deal with PDFs or I have to on behalf of my parents it is a true waste of time and resources - there has to be a better way.

kibwen 6y ago

Sure you can: find an ideologically motivated tech billionaire, buy Adobe, release a new version of PDF and make the spec an inaccessible trade secret, aggressively legislate against anyone who attempts to implement it, start charging for Reader, increase the price by a compounding 2% every year, and put that money towards a foundation with a purpose of openly designing and implementing a better, freely-licensed replacement. I predict this would only take 20 to 30 years. :)

boringg 6y ago
Sounds like you've been thinking about this. You don't happen to be an ideologically motivated billionaire who happens to think the best thing for humanity and return on capital is to rebuild the pdf spec do you? * fingers crossed

rossdavidh 6y ago

Just in case you were looking for an actual answer to your question: "no".

jrochkind1 6y ago

Well, no, we can't just do that. But it's nice to dream.

topspin 6y ago
Well, yes, we can, but the outcome will be far worse. The naive imagine "something better." The real world will interpret "better" as 27 half baked alternatives, 2 of which will work on something other than Chrome running on Windows.
- boringg 6y ago
  Agree with this - minus the naive part. I think you can dream and you can have "something better" but you risk all the good work that has been put in already which might put you in a worse spot. If you ran a hypothetical model on what the future outcomes might be the likelihood of something better is probably pretty small. That said, we can always dream.
- jrochkind1 6y ago
  OK sure, let's just do it then. Let's start... now. Is it happening yet? Can't we just do it?

Semiapies 6y ago

At the very least, you need a replacement that's technically better, works well cross-platform, has a layman-acceptable UI, and supports 99.999%+ of all the use cases PDFs currently supports. It also has to convert old PDFs into the new format. Then, you have to worry about market share and acceptance.

andylynch 6y ago

One of the reasons PDFs are still so common is they do their job pretty well, i.e. accurately displaying documents. Any alternative would need some very compelling reason to use it instead. Take Microsoft’s XPS which I think is it’s closest rival. It is an open standard based on XML. It’s built into Windows, Office, and many printers support it natively along with major software vendors, but I can’t think of a single time I’ve come across an XPS file online.