5 ms·

Probably more accessible in general. (PDF) Papers are psychologically scary.

mmis1000 3y ago
Pdf is by design a image format that can also embed text. It just don't have the primitives to properly retain the article structure.
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  Nah, it's a super-complex system that creates a graph of components, can draw vectors like PostScript, can embed 3-d models, etc. The spec is here https://opensource.adobe.com/dc-acrobat-sdk-docs/pdfstandards/PDF32000_2008.pdf https://opensource.adobe.com/dc-acrobat-sdk-docs/pdfstandard... if you look at sections 14.6 through 14.10 you will find quite baroque facilities for representing the structure of documents in great detail, making documents with accessibility data, making documents that can reflow with HTML, etc. Note to mention the 14.11 stuff which addresses problems with high end printing (say you want to make litho plates for a book.) For that matter sections 14.4 and 14.5 describe facilities that can be used to add additional private data to PDF files for particular applications. For instance Adobe Illustrator's files are PDF files with some extra private data, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoPDF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoPDF I like to complain that PDF has no facility to draw a circle but instead makes you approximate a circle with (accursed) Bézier curves but other than that the main complaint people make about PDF is that it is too complicated not that it is lacking this feature or that feature. Contrast that to a highly opinionated document format like DjVu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DjVu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DjVu which came out around the same time as PDF and is specialized for the problem of scanned documents and works by decomposing the document into three layers, one of which is a bilevel layer intended to represent text. All three layers have specialized coding schemes, the text layer in particular tries to identify that every copy of (say) the letter "e" or the character "漢" is the same and reuse s the same bitmap for them.
  - anonimo37 3y ago
    You would normally use a library to create the PDF so you don't need deal with the complexity of the format. A library would likely provide a function for drawing circles that translates the circle into Bézier curves.
  - mmis1000 3y ago
    The adode can surely add whatever extension they want to address whatever problem. But unfortunately, most implementation outside of Adobe acrobat itself won't implement all of them. Most library would just implement basic part for printing and marking (At best, supports forms and javascript). That part is basically non-exist for anyone. There is a reason that most people still use docx for forms even pdf technically support forms. PS: pdf reader of firefox and chrome don't really supports forms until very late versions.
deleted 3y ago
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Pdf is by design a image format that can also embed text. It just don't have the primitives to properly retain the article structure.

PaulHoule 3y ago
Nah, it's a super-complex system that creates a graph of components, can draw vectors like PostScript, can embed 3-d models, etc. The spec is here https://opensource.adobe.com/dc-acrobat-sdk-docs/pdfstandards/PDF32000_2008.pdf https://opensource.adobe.com/dc-acrobat-sdk-docs/pdfstandard... if you look at sections 14.6 through 14.10 you will find quite baroque facilities for representing the structure of documents in great detail, making documents with accessibility data, making documents that can reflow with HTML, etc. Note to mention the 14.11 stuff which addresses problems with high end printing (say you want to make litho plates for a book.) For that matter sections 14.4 and 14.5 describe facilities that can be used to add additional private data to PDF files for particular applications. For instance Adobe Illustrator's files are PDF files with some extra private data, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoPDF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoPDF I like to complain that PDF has no facility to draw a circle but instead makes you approximate a circle with (accursed) Bézier curves but other than that the main complaint people make about PDF is that it is too complicated not that it is lacking this feature or that feature. Contrast that to a highly opinionated document format like DjVu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DjVu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DjVu which came out around the same time as PDF and is specialized for the problem of scanned documents and works by decomposing the document into three layers, one of which is a bilevel layer intended to represent text. All three layers have specialized coding schemes, the text layer in particular tries to identify that every copy of (say) the letter "e" or the character "漢" is the same and reuse s the same bitmap for them.
- anonimo37 3y ago
  You would normally use a library to create the PDF so you don't need deal with the complexity of the format. A library would likely provide a function for drawing circles that translates the circle into Bézier curves.
- mmis1000 3y ago
  The adode can surely add whatever extension they want to address whatever problem. But unfortunately, most implementation outside of Adobe acrobat itself won't implement all of them. Most library would just implement basic part for printing and marking (At best, supports forms and javascript). That part is basically non-exist for anyone. There is a reason that most people still use docx for forms even pdf technically support forms. PS: pdf reader of firefox and chrome don't really supports forms until very late versions.

deleted 3y ago

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