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> The PDF format is famously complex. With support for various media types, complicated font rendering and even rudimentary scripting, PDF readers are a common
by eviks 2y ago
> The PDF format is famously complex. With support for various media types, complicated font rendering and even rudimentary scripting, PDF readers are a common target for vulnerability researchers.
So still no chance in the foreseeable future for this monstrous "paper-based" mockery of docs in a digital age to get phased out?
- pjmlp 2y agoSure, if you come up with something that covers all PS and PDF use cases.
- niutech 2y agoWhat about OpenXPS (ECMA-388)?
- mdaniel 2y agoI opened https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_XML_Paper_Specification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_XML_Paper_Specification and searched for "form field" and got no hits, so if nothing else the IRS couldn't use it. The Licensing section is filled with all kinds of nonsense, but I guess if it's an ECMA standard ... how bad can it be? https://ecma-international.org/wp-content/uploads/TC46-XPS-White-Paper.xps https://ecma-international.org/wp-content/uploads/TC46-XPS-W... and https://ecma-international.org/wp-content/uploads/TC46-XPS-White-Paper.pdf https://ecma-international.org/wp-content/uploads/TC46-XPS-W... are interesting in that they're different packaging of presumably the same data for compare-and-contrast. I will say that exploring .xps files is much easier via $(unzip) than using qpdf or friends
- rrr_oh_man 2y agoWhat's the alternative?
- jandrese 2y agoEps, but it is not much better.
- jl6 2y agoPDF/A. All the good bits of PDF (compatibility, standardization, encapsulation), without the worst bits (media extensions, JavaScript). (Except PDF/A-4, which reintroduces JavaScript for some horrific reason).
- azeemba 2y agoThe problem here was neither media extensions nor embedded JavaScript though. It was pdf.js handling of fonts
- agumonkey 2y agoThat said, a smaller spec may help people focus on more solid code. Potentially.
- bee_rider 2y agoPDF/A requires fonts to be embedded rather than linked, would that have saved the day?
- jl6 2y agoNo, /FontMatrix is part of a metadata object which can be present whether the font is embedded or external.
- eviks 2y agoThe worst bit of PDF since its inception (the worst since it covers the most common use case before media/JS) is that it's not a real digital document as in: simplistic digital things like selection©&paste are broken "by design"
- gruez 2y ago>is that it's not a real digital document as in: simplistic digital things like selection©&paste are broken "by design" Copy paste mostly works fine for me. I only have trouble when it's generated in a weird way (eg. scanned from a paper document then fed through OCR), or has complex formatting (eg. math equations) that have no hope of working correctly in any system. In those cases, I don't see how it's the fault of the PDF format, any more than HTML (or whatever you think is a "real digital document" format) can embed a picture of a scanned document that totally breaks copy-pasting.
- niutech 2y agoOpenXPS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_XML_Paper_Specification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_XML_Paper_Specification), DjVu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DjVu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DjVu).
- sneed_chucker 2y agohttps://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
- Dalewyn 2y agoPaper is still very much a thing in business and office work. PDFs allowing a near perfect translation between computer monitor and paper is an absolutely critical piece of technological infrastructure.