5 ms·

lol I've had this exact same occur multiple times... basically every time we have staff turnover in our condo office no one knows how to print to pdf... so ever

lol I've had this exact same occur multiple times... basically every time we have staff turnover in our condo office no one knows how to print to pdf... so every year or two I have to show someone how to do it, including up to 2022. My pet peeve is that even in 2023 I still receive scans of printouts from accountants. They print out their reports to add cover sheets and add pages, and then scan it back in to deliver as a financial statement.

ryandrake 3y ago
Great example of terrible software UX that we just put up with. I want to save this file onto my filesystem as a PDF file. Why the hell do I need to choose “Print” to do this?? If you are a developer, you might know the reason, but as an end user, this is baffling and totally unexpected. Just put “PDF” as another option in File->Export, where it makes the most sense to an end user. Or, even better, developers, just use the “Save” function, not “Export”. Why we have to separate “Export” from “Save” is another terrible UX that only makes sense to developers.
- Aldipower 3y ago
  There were reasons for it even developers didn't understand. PDF is actually Adobe PDF and you had to use the Adobe PDF Creator to create PDFs. To be able to save to PDF by a 3rd party application would have meant licenses fees to Adobe. So some clever guys came up to "misuse" a printer library for PDF creation... Today in Libre Office, of course you find a button to _save_ directly to PDF. Not sure about MS Office though.
  - goosedragons 3y ago
    Office has had it built-in since 2010, 2007 you need an add-on.
  - abdullahkhalids 3y ago
    You will have to cite this in some form. Latex has been able to create pdf files since the 90s.
- croisillon 3y ago
  it's very true! i could add that my colleague is 60 and not particularly dumb
- michaelmrose 3y ago
  If you see something that you believe only makes sense to developers odds are it actually DOES make sense in terms of the underling model that the application is working with. For instance the way save works is that you save your file as foo.txt subsequent saves automatically write further changes to the chosen file in the chosen format. If you "save as" again you change what the active file and format is. So for instance you "save as" foo.docx. Subsequent saves go to foo.docx and foo.txt stays as it is before the "save as" and you could open either one an continue where you left off. Now take PDF a piece of shit format able to submit remote forms, execute JavaScript, and render and manipulate 3D models. Its a garbage application formation masquerading as a bad document format. It makes sense to produce a pdf as a snapshot of the document but it makes zero sense to treat it as txt or docx one doesn't simply "save as" pdf and then continue editing in that format. If you use save for this feature how do you express the fact that you don't want to make foo.pdf the new default save target especially if you can't subsequently open it? Do you just silently not do that? This violates good design where observable functionality reflects as much as possible the comprehensible part of the user model you are presenting to the user. Having save as silently work differently when targeting an output only format is a bad solution. Save vs Export expresses the underlying reality. You see the same conceptual reality where you are creating multimedia and the output format is lossy.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    This is part of what I'm complaining about: There often _is_ a technical reason (occasionally even a good technical reason) for why the software is made a certain way, but those reasons are things that should only be relevant to the developer, not to the end user. The end user should not care about the "underlying model" or the "active file format". The software should "just work", and the frontend developer's job is to make the right judgment calls and hide irrelevant underlying nuance and complexity from the user. Great software doesn't "ship the org chart" or "ship the class abstractions". If there really is an important power user case, provide an Expert Mode for those who care about the underlying model. That way, users who care about the lack of editabilty of PDFs or who actually mentally distinguish between lossless source material and lossy outputs to lose nothing, but other casual users gain a lot when these things are done for them.
- robinsonb5 3y ago
  >Why we have to separate “Export” from “Save” is another terrible UX that only makes sense to developers. I'm actually torn on this one. I can see where you're coming from, but I can also see value in the conceptual separation between saving a file in a form which can reloaded with full editability, and exporting it in a foreign format which effectively freezes it in its current form. Commingling those two concepts does cause significant confusion in non-technical people. Having said that, I still swear whenever muscle-memory from 20 years ago tricks me into trying to File->Save a .tif in GIMP, and instead of doing what I want, it lectures me about how I should use File->Export instead, like some bratty kid playing "Simon Says".
- kayodelycaon 3y ago
  macOS has pdf in the print dialog because is just a fancy front end to CUPS. To the OS, a pdf is just another printer. Fortunately, nearly every Mac application uses the standard dialog, so you only have to learn it once.

ryandrake 3y ago

Great example of terrible software UX that we just put up with. I want to save this file onto my filesystem as a PDF file. Why the hell do I need to choose “Print” to do this?? If you are a developer, you might know the reason, but as an end user, this is baffling and totally unexpected. Just put “PDF” as another option in File->Export, where it makes the most sense to an end user. Or, even better, developers, just use the “Save” function, not “Export”. Why we have to separate “Export” from “Save” is another terrible UX that only makes sense to developers.

Aldipower 3y ago
There were reasons for it even developers didn't understand. PDF is actually Adobe PDF and you had to use the Adobe PDF Creator to create PDFs. To be able to save to PDF by a 3rd party application would have meant licenses fees to Adobe. So some clever guys came up to "misuse" a printer library for PDF creation... Today in Libre Office, of course you find a button to _save_ directly to PDF. Not sure about MS Office though.
- goosedragons 3y ago
  Office has had it built-in since 2010, 2007 you need an add-on.
- abdullahkhalids 3y ago
  You will have to cite this in some form. Latex has been able to create pdf files since the 90s.
croisillon 3y ago
it's very true! i could add that my colleague is 60 and not particularly dumb
michaelmrose 3y ago
If you see something that you believe only makes sense to developers odds are it actually DOES make sense in terms of the underling model that the application is working with. For instance the way save works is that you save your file as foo.txt subsequent saves automatically write further changes to the chosen file in the chosen format. If you "save as" again you change what the active file and format is. So for instance you "save as" foo.docx. Subsequent saves go to foo.docx and foo.txt stays as it is before the "save as" and you could open either one an continue where you left off. Now take PDF a piece of shit format able to submit remote forms, execute JavaScript, and render and manipulate 3D models. Its a garbage application formation masquerading as a bad document format. It makes sense to produce a pdf as a snapshot of the document but it makes zero sense to treat it as txt or docx one doesn't simply "save as" pdf and then continue editing in that format. If you use save for this feature how do you express the fact that you don't want to make foo.pdf the new default save target especially if you can't subsequently open it? Do you just silently not do that? This violates good design where observable functionality reflects as much as possible the comprehensible part of the user model you are presenting to the user. Having save as silently work differently when targeting an output only format is a bad solution. Save vs Export expresses the underlying reality. You see the same conceptual reality where you are creating multimedia and the output format is lossy.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  This is part of what I'm complaining about: There often _is_ a technical reason (occasionally even a good technical reason) for why the software is made a certain way, but those reasons are things that should only be relevant to the developer, not to the end user. The end user should not care about the "underlying model" or the "active file format". The software should "just work", and the frontend developer's job is to make the right judgment calls and hide irrelevant underlying nuance and complexity from the user. Great software doesn't "ship the org chart" or "ship the class abstractions". If there really is an important power user case, provide an Expert Mode for those who care about the underlying model. That way, users who care about the lack of editabilty of PDFs or who actually mentally distinguish between lossless source material and lossy outputs to lose nothing, but other casual users gain a lot when these things are done for them.
robinsonb5 3y ago
>Why we have to separate “Export” from “Save” is another terrible UX that only makes sense to developers. I'm actually torn on this one. I can see where you're coming from, but I can also see value in the conceptual separation between saving a file in a form which can reloaded with full editability, and exporting it in a foreign format which effectively freezes it in its current form. Commingling those two concepts does cause significant confusion in non-technical people. Having said that, I still swear whenever muscle-memory from 20 years ago tricks me into trying to File->Save a .tif in GIMP, and instead of doing what I want, it lectures me about how I should use File->Export instead, like some bratty kid playing "Simon Says".
kayodelycaon 3y ago
macOS has pdf in the print dialog because is just a fancy front end to CUPS. To the OS, a pdf is just another printer. Fortunately, nearly every Mac application uses the standard dialog, so you only have to learn it once.