4 ms·

It's old, proprietary, modeled after the PostScript printer control language, from an era before XML, and never had the intention of being open.

arinlen 4y ago
> It's old, proprietary, modeled after the PostScript printer control language, from an era before XML, and never had the intention of being open. I have the impression you have no direct contact, experience, or first-hand knowledge with PDF. If age mattered (which it doesn't) then PDF's latest update was published on 2020, which is far fresher than XML's spec. Nevertheless, it's absurd to compare a document format with a markup language. at most, you should compare ooxml with PDF, if that comparison mattered. If it did then you'd certainly be surprised when you'd discover that PDF is far simpler and more readable and easier to reason about than ooxml+XML. Nevertheless what makes PDF complex is that it has about a dozen versions which support everything and the kitchen sink, including incremental document updates which can also be comprised of ad-hoc version updates.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  > If age mattered (which it doesn't) then PDF's latest update was published on 2020, which is far fresher than XML's spec. Standards are dragged down by their oldest version, not the newest. EDIT: Sorry, that was a nice punchline but didn't actually explain very well. My point is that unless they actually start over, which almost never happens, newer versions tend to just be more layers of stuff to deal with. It's not just a "who has the most recent revision date", but "who has the least 'interesting' historical baggage baked into the spec".
  - arinlen 4y ago
    > Standards are dragged down by their oldest version, not the newest. Not really, specially if you keep in mind that newer standards have erratas and newer versions, like PDF 2.0, deprecate features.
    - anyfoo 4y ago
      How's that going for JPEG2000? HTTP2? IPv6? Not saying they don't have adoption, but to this day you are debilitatingly limiting yourself if you ignore the older ones, and their cruft.

arinlen 4y ago

> It's old, proprietary, modeled after the PostScript printer control language, from an era before XML, and never had the intention of being open. I have the impression you have no direct contact, experience, or first-hand knowledge with PDF. If age mattered (which it doesn't) then PDF's latest update was published on 2020, which is far fresher than XML's spec. Nevertheless, it's absurd to compare a document format with a markup language. at most, you should compare ooxml with PDF, if that comparison mattered. If it did then you'd certainly be surprised when you'd discover that PDF is far simpler and more readable and easier to reason about than ooxml+XML. Nevertheless what makes PDF complex is that it has about a dozen versions which support everything and the kitchen sink, including incremental document updates which can also be comprised of ad-hoc version updates.

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
> If age mattered (which it doesn't) then PDF's latest update was published on 2020, which is far fresher than XML's spec. Standards are dragged down by their oldest version, not the newest. EDIT: Sorry, that was a nice punchline but didn't actually explain very well. My point is that unless they actually start over, which almost never happens, newer versions tend to just be more layers of stuff to deal with. It's not just a "who has the most recent revision date", but "who has the least 'interesting' historical baggage baked into the spec".
- arinlen 4y ago
  > Standards are dragged down by their oldest version, not the newest. Not really, specially if you keep in mind that newer standards have erratas and newer versions, like PDF 2.0, deprecate features.
  - anyfoo 4y ago
    How's that going for JPEG2000? HTTP2? IPv6? Not saying they don't have adoption, but to this day you are debilitatingly limiting yourself if you ignore the older ones, and their cruft.