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As someone who's spent a decent amount of time writing "output to pdf" routines, I would never in a million years choose pdf as an interchange format for anythi
by codexb 3y ago
As someone who's spent a decent amount of time writing "output to pdf" routines, I would never in a million years choose pdf as an interchange format for anything at all.
- bee_rider 3y agoUnfortunately PDF is, like, one of the most reassuring file formats. https://xkcd.com/1301/ https://xkcd.com/1301/ What would you put at the top? .PS is pretty fancy, although, just because it is probably saying “this is basically a PDF but from the olden days.”
- swores 3y agoThat comic is about what file types people choose to put what types of information (e.g. PDFs don't often get used for memes, and gifs don't often get used for scientific research papers). It's not even trying to make a point about the quality of the file formats themselves. (I assume when you wrote "most reassuring" you were instead interpreting it as a comic about the file types' ability to accurately hold the information a user wants them to hold, because "reassuring" as pertains to the comic's actual meaning would be completely irrelevant to this topic of whether or not PDF makes a good interchange format.)
- rustyminnow 3y agoYeah but that chart is saved as a PNG which is like, pretty low on the scale. I don't think we can trust anything on there.
- notatoad 3y agoi think that comic is from an earlier time when making PDFs was harder.
- dagw 3y agoPDF/A is the required format for delivering and archiving the final CAD drawings in many major civil engineering projects I've been involved in,
- somat 3y agoRight, I like to joke that pdf is where data goes to die. But management loves them, so we continue making them. As clarification, once the data goes in to a pdf it is a pain to get out again for further processing. Not impossible, but the format is clearly designed to put shapes on paper. anything more and you have to fight for it.