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kinda funny you need a pdf reader to read the pdf specification :)
by Anunayj 5y ago
kinda funny you need a pdf reader to read the pdf specification :)
- geodel 5y agoIts same with html spec I think.
- zdw 5y agoHTML is somewhat human readable in a text editor, but PDF likely is not.
- yardshop 5y agoActually a lot of the PDF format is plain text, but can contain binary streams. You can open a PDF in a text editor and see the header, and skip to the end and see the xref index and some other parts. The binary sections are enclosed in plain text start and end markers, but you probably won't be able to read much of the actual content this way since it will be compressed or encrypted.
- pajko 5y agoSometimes even the binary fragments are compressed plain text.
- Cerium 5y agoYeah, how did they bootstrap the first pdf reader? /s It must have been hard guessing at the spec until you could read it properly.
- cwt137 5y agoMaybe they used Postscript?
- mdaniel 5y agoI somehow thought early versions of the PDF spec were published as a .ps version for that very reason, but my duck-fu is failing me finding any such link. It may require wayback-fu and that's beyond my level-of-effort :-)