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I don't think you can represent arbitrary data in a pdf AND have pdf viewers actually render it. If the pdf format screws precision (and I'm not surprised it do
by laserbeam 3y ago
I don't think you can represent arbitrary data in a pdf AND have pdf viewers actually render it. If the pdf format screws precision (and I'm not surprised it does, it screws paragraphs and often only contains metadata to reconstruct lines of text), it should not be used as a data interchange format.
Pdf is for print and human eyeballs. It's brilliant for those 2 things and not much else.
- layer8 3y ago> I don't think you can represent arbitrary data in a pdf AND have pdf viewers actually render it. You can have both in parallel, and have the editing software regenerate the rendered form from the source data form when anything changes. It’s not completely uncommon to use PDFs as a data carrier that way.
- maxerickson 3y agoIf I was dead set on using pdf as an interchange format, I'd make the standard that the pdf content was a drawing of the data and then also embed a better representation of the data. So a well formed file can be previewed with any pdf reader, but no problems with data quality when you go to use it for something. Of course the drawing could then be out of step with the data, but so what.