4 ms·

Here's the rest of the statement that you left out that answers your point. "...I just need my OS to keep working for me. This bug could hit me without even ow

Here's the rest of the statement that you left out that answers your point. "...I just need my OS to keep working for me. This bug could hit me without even owning a scanner at all – someone sending me a PDF that I then unknowingly break before archiving it. That’s the part I’m mad about."

zepto 6y ago
It doesn’t really. Firstly, that’s not what they are mad about, since that hasn’t actually happened to them. They are mad that the pdf’s their scanner produces don’t work properly. And secondly, that hypothetical could well be using broken software too. We really don’t know how bad the PDF’s ABBY produces are, but as someone who owned this scanner and the software, it’s fairly obvious that the software is barely maintained. It really isn’t Apple’s fault if someone else is producing bad files that they happened to previously tolerate, especially if that somebody isn’t maintaining their software.
- arvindamirtaa 6y ago
  > "They are using software unsupported by the vendor and blaming Apple for the outcome." But by this logic, no software other than those that Apple sells you directly (their own or through the MAS) is "supported software". If Apple makes a change and all of them break rendering it useless of anyone using software not bought from them, would you still be making this same apology?
  - zepto 6y ago
    No this is not correct. ABBY hasn’t updated their software for Big Sur, i.e. ABBY themselves say it hasn’t been updated yet and is not supported by them on Big Sur. That’s what unsupported means. It has nothing to do with whether Apple supports it.
    - arvindamirtaa 6y ago
      I receive that PDF file that looks like any other PDF file. I open it with preview. It opens fine. I close it and open it again. It opens fine. I open it a third time and make a small arrow pointing to something and save it (as I would with ANY OTHER PDF). It breaks. I'm not using ABBYY. I've never heard of it. It's not on my system. It's just a PDF file that I got sent. Now what?
      - dayjobpork 6y ago
        You are opening it wrong /s
      - zepto 6y ago
        You’re a victim of ABBYY’s poor PDF generation, that’s what. Nothing excuses ABBYY if their PDFs are corrupt.
        arvindamirtaa 6y ago
        Hahaha this is just brilliant.
        zepto 6y ago
        It’s not brilliant. It’s just correct if ABBYY is producing corrupt PDFs, which is a possible cause of this problem.
        arvindamirtaa 6y ago
        If "Corrupt" = works fine until you make an edit and save using Preview, yes. You're 100% correct.
        zepto 6y ago
        Works fine until you make an edit really doesn’t mean anything at all. PDF is much more complex than just a static image.
        6y ago
- function_seven 6y ago
  > It really isn’t Apple’s fault if someone else is producing bad files that they happened to previously tolerate, especially if that somebody isn’t maintaining their software. I think it is. Preview used to correctly handle the thing, and now it doesn't. Users cannot be expected to inspect the raw PS code of their PDFs to determine standards compliance. What they can do is assume that something that works yesterday, and appears to work today, is in fact working. The PDFs didn't change, the application did. It's the application's fault. If you have compatible behavior that you remove, it's on you to alert the user of the reduced functionality.
  - zepto 6y ago
    Yes, it is in principle possible that Apple was doing something special to support bad PDFs produced by ABBY which they then removed. If this is what happened, I would agree with you. But, there is no evidence yet that they removed anything. It’s quite possible (I’d say likely) that ABBY’s PDFs were corrupt all along. Preview may have tolerated them not because of a special feature which was then removed, but because it happened not to depend on correctness before. In this case, Apple wouldn’t have been in a position to even know about the problem. You know who would? ABBY, who have had free access to Big Sur for months. You’d think that even cursory testing at their end would have shown this problem. They have had months to fix it, months to work with Apple on the issue, any months to publicize it it really is Apple’s fault.
    - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
      The trouble is the PDF specification is vague and ambiguous in a number of areas. This has resulted in a lot of ill formed documents. If you are going to write a PDF reader then you are going to have to accept those documents and not corrupt them. Even if ABBY does have a bug and fixes it then people will still have a bunch of older documents they will want to read.
      - zepto 6y ago
        This is mostly accurate, however it is an idealization to suggest that you can accept and not corrupt all of the ill-formed documents. This is in principle impossible. If it turns out that there is a widespread problem with many kinds of document that no longer work properly, I’ll be more inclined to say Apple is at fault. But as it stands, it just seems like ABBY has been producing bad PDFs.
- ihuman 6y ago
  > They are mad that the pdf’s their scanner produces don’t work properly The PDF that FineReader made worked properly. The one that Preview made didn't.
  - zepto 6y ago
    How do you know it worked properly?
    - ihuman 6y ago
      The first paragraph and image in the article. When the author copied the text from FineReader's PDF and pasted it in TextEdit, it had the correct text. When the author tried that with preview's pdf, it pasted garbled data.
      - zepto 6y ago
        That doesn’t mean there wasn’t file corruption.
        ihuman 6y ago
        I never said anything about file corruption. You asked how I know FineReader worked properly, and I explained why the article showed it working properly, and that preview doesn't work properly anymore.
        zepto 6y ago
        File corruption would be a way it would not be working properly that wouldn’t be revealed by what you did.
  - dkonofalski 6y ago
    That doesn't mean it's a valid PDF. Preview has error correction to try and recover document data when metadata is corrupt. It's entirely possible that the documents have always had corrupt metadata and that Preview now expects stricter PDF guidelines.
- jfim 6y ago
  > It really isn’t Apple’s fault if someone else is producing bad files that they happened to previously tolerate, especially if that somebody isn’t maintaining their software. It's not clear if the issue is caused by the PDF files produced by ABBYY, or if the issue is also present in other OCR'ed PDF files. In either case, Preview shouldn't silently corrupt the file. It could display an error saying that it was unable to save the file, or a warning that some data couldn't be saved, so that the user can check if the file still works for them after saving.
  - zepto 6y ago
    PDF’s are essentially a stack machine based program. It’s not clear what’s causing the problem, but verifying correctness of programs is not a solved computer science problem.
    - duskwuff 6y ago
      PDF is not a stack machine. This is a common misconception. PostScript was a stack machine with included operators which implemented a set of vector graphics commands. PDF has a similar rendering pipeline, but it renders a set of primitives described directly in the document -- there is no virtual machine involved.
      - zepto 6y ago
        My understating is that PDF still has a stack machine. Just one that is much simpler. Having said that, PDF is vastly more complex than it was originally. It can contain forms, JavaScript, audio, video, accessibility metadata, etc. It’s an extremely complex format.
        buckminster 6y ago
        Yes, but it's easy to generate a valid pdf. You just include the features you need and ignore the rest. It's really hard to transform an arbitrary pdf because you need to handle all the features. Without further information this is more likely to be an Apple bug because they are doing the harder job.

zepto 6y ago

It doesn’t really. Firstly, that’s not what they are mad about, since that hasn’t actually happened to them. They are mad that the pdf’s their scanner produces don’t work properly. And secondly, that hypothetical could well be using broken software too. We really don’t know how bad the PDF’s ABBY produces are, but as someone who owned this scanner and the software, it’s fairly obvious that the software is barely maintained. It really isn’t Apple’s fault if someone else is producing bad files that they happened to previously tolerate, especially if that somebody isn’t maintaining their software.

arvindamirtaa 6y ago
> "They are using software unsupported by the vendor and blaming Apple for the outcome." But by this logic, no software other than those that Apple sells you directly (their own or through the MAS) is "supported software". If Apple makes a change and all of them break rendering it useless of anyone using software not bought from them, would you still be making this same apology?
- zepto 6y ago
  No this is not correct. ABBY hasn’t updated their software for Big Sur, i.e. ABBY themselves say it hasn’t been updated yet and is not supported by them on Big Sur. That’s what unsupported means. It has nothing to do with whether Apple supports it.
  - arvindamirtaa 6y ago
    I receive that PDF file that looks like any other PDF file. I open it with preview. It opens fine. I close it and open it again. It opens fine. I open it a third time and make a small arrow pointing to something and save it (as I would with ANY OTHER PDF). It breaks. I'm not using ABBYY. I've never heard of it. It's not on my system. It's just a PDF file that I got sent. Now what?
    - dayjobpork 6y ago
      You are opening it wrong /s
    - zepto 6y ago
      You’re a victim of ABBYY’s poor PDF generation, that’s what. Nothing excuses ABBYY if their PDFs are corrupt.
      - arvindamirtaa 6y ago
        Hahaha this is just brilliant.
        zepto 6y ago
        It’s not brilliant. It’s just correct if ABBYY is producing corrupt PDFs, which is a possible cause of this problem.
        arvindamirtaa 6y ago
        If "Corrupt" = works fine until you make an edit and save using Preview, yes. You're 100% correct.
        zepto 6y ago
        Works fine until you make an edit really doesn’t mean anything at all. PDF is much more complex than just a static image.
      - 6y ago
function_seven 6y ago
> It really isn’t Apple’s fault if someone else is producing bad files that they happened to previously tolerate, especially if that somebody isn’t maintaining their software. I think it is. Preview used to correctly handle the thing, and now it doesn't. Users cannot be expected to inspect the raw PS code of their PDFs to determine standards compliance. What they can do is assume that something that works yesterday, and appears to work today, is in fact working. The PDFs didn't change, the application did. It's the application's fault. If you have compatible behavior that you remove, it's on you to alert the user of the reduced functionality.
- zepto 6y ago
  Yes, it is in principle possible that Apple was doing something special to support bad PDFs produced by ABBY which they then removed. If this is what happened, I would agree with you. But, there is no evidence yet that they removed anything. It’s quite possible (I’d say likely) that ABBY’s PDFs were corrupt all along. Preview may have tolerated them not because of a special feature which was then removed, but because it happened not to depend on correctness before. In this case, Apple wouldn’t have been in a position to even know about the problem. You know who would? ABBY, who have had free access to Big Sur for months. You’d think that even cursory testing at their end would have shown this problem. They have had months to fix it, months to work with Apple on the issue, any months to publicize it it really is Apple’s fault.
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    The trouble is the PDF specification is vague and ambiguous in a number of areas. This has resulted in a lot of ill formed documents. If you are going to write a PDF reader then you are going to have to accept those documents and not corrupt them. Even if ABBY does have a bug and fixes it then people will still have a bunch of older documents they will want to read.
    - zepto 6y ago
      This is mostly accurate, however it is an idealization to suggest that you can accept and not corrupt all of the ill-formed documents. This is in principle impossible. If it turns out that there is a widespread problem with many kinds of document that no longer work properly, I’ll be more inclined to say Apple is at fault. But as it stands, it just seems like ABBY has been producing bad PDFs.
ihuman 6y ago
> They are mad that the pdf’s their scanner produces don’t work properly The PDF that FineReader made worked properly. The one that Preview made didn't.
- zepto 6y ago
  How do you know it worked properly?
  - ihuman 6y ago
    The first paragraph and image in the article. When the author copied the text from FineReader's PDF and pasted it in TextEdit, it had the correct text. When the author tried that with preview's pdf, it pasted garbled data.
    - zepto 6y ago
      That doesn’t mean there wasn’t file corruption.
      - ihuman 6y ago
        I never said anything about file corruption. You asked how I know FineReader worked properly, and I explained why the article showed it working properly, and that preview doesn't work properly anymore.
        zepto 6y ago
        File corruption would be a way it would not be working properly that wouldn’t be revealed by what you did.
- dkonofalski 6y ago
  That doesn't mean it's a valid PDF. Preview has error correction to try and recover document data when metadata is corrupt. It's entirely possible that the documents have always had corrupt metadata and that Preview now expects stricter PDF guidelines.
jfim 6y ago
> It really isn’t Apple’s fault if someone else is producing bad files that they happened to previously tolerate, especially if that somebody isn’t maintaining their software. It's not clear if the issue is caused by the PDF files produced by ABBYY, or if the issue is also present in other OCR'ed PDF files. In either case, Preview shouldn't silently corrupt the file. It could display an error saying that it was unable to save the file, or a warning that some data couldn't be saved, so that the user can check if the file still works for them after saving.
- zepto 6y ago
  PDF’s are essentially a stack machine based program. It’s not clear what’s causing the problem, but verifying correctness of programs is not a solved computer science problem.
  - duskwuff 6y ago
    PDF is not a stack machine. This is a common misconception. PostScript was a stack machine with included operators which implemented a set of vector graphics commands. PDF has a similar rendering pipeline, but it renders a set of primitives described directly in the document -- there is no virtual machine involved.
    - zepto 6y ago
      My understating is that PDF still has a stack machine. Just one that is much simpler. Having said that, PDF is vastly more complex than it was originally. It can contain forms, JavaScript, audio, video, accessibility metadata, etc. It’s an extremely complex format.
      - buckminster 6y ago
        Yes, but it's easy to generate a valid pdf. You just include the features you need and ignore the rest. It's really hard to transform an arbitrary pdf because you need to handle all the features. Without further information this is more likely to be an Apple bug because they are doing the harder job.