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Text formats should be readable forever. PDF, while generally excellent in this regard, has already broken backwards-comparability on several occasions (or rat

Text formats should be readable forever. PDF, while generally excellent in this regard, has already broken backwards-comparability on several occasions (or rather: Acrobat has, which is not formally the same as the format doing so, but in practice there isn’t a whole lot of difference; you might as well just read the raw xml in an “unopenable” keynote document). Adobe’s marketing will tell you otherwise, of course. I used to share an office at Berkeley with Paulo Ney de Souza, who had a wonderful collection of “legacy” pdf files that could no longer be opened in Acrobat that he would trot out for the Adobe sales people when they came by (he was helping to get MSP off the ground at that point). PDF is probably the best choice for preserving “design”, but I wouldn’t trust it for preserving content any more than any other format. Always keep a plain text copy.

scrollaway 13y ago
PDF is an open spec since a few years. http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pdf/pdf_reference.html http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pdf/pdf_reference.html
- stephencanon 13y ago
  Open spec doesn't help unless all the creation tools adhere strictly to the specification. Historically, they haven't, and support for their various "quirks" has been uneven at best.
- rakoo 13y ago
  Officially, OOXML (aka .docx and friends) is an open spec, too.
  - scrollaway 13y ago
    And that's a good thing. OOXML is a terrible format, but it's still an open spec. Or do you want .doc back?
  - chimeracoder 13y ago
    .docx (and co.) isn't really an open spec. Microsoft forced it through the standardization process, but it doesn't really deserve the title. The "spec" is full of statements like "render this the way that it was done in Office 95". The best solution would be to use ODF, which is supported by all office software.... except Apple's.
    - yuhong 13y ago
      Yea, I mentioned it in my wishlist for Satya: http://hal2020.com/2014/03/03/satya-shuffles-his-leadership/#comment-14919 http://hal2020.com/2014/03/03/satya-shuffles-his-leadership/...
blueblob 13y ago
I agree, the same argument could probably have been made of postscript (ps) at some point in time and while it's still around, most (non-technical) people don't use it.
gioele 13y ago
> PDF is probably the best choice for preserving “design”, but I wouldn’t trust it for preserving content any more than any other format. Always keep a plain text copy. I agree, but have a look at PDF/A (A is for Archiv{e|al}): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF/A http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF/A > PDF/A is an ISO-standardized version of the Portable Document Format (PDF) specialized for the digital preservation of electronic documents. > PDF/A differs from PDF by omitting features ill-suited to long-term archiving, such as font linking (as opposed to font embedding).

scrollaway 13y ago

PDF is an open spec since a few years. http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pdf/pdf_reference.html http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pdf/pdf_reference.html

stephencanon 13y ago
Open spec doesn't help unless all the creation tools adhere strictly to the specification. Historically, they haven't, and support for their various "quirks" has been uneven at best.
rakoo 13y ago
Officially, OOXML (aka .docx and friends) is an open spec, too.
- scrollaway 13y ago
  And that's a good thing. OOXML is a terrible format, but it's still an open spec. Or do you want .doc back?
- chimeracoder 13y ago
  .docx (and co.) isn't really an open spec. Microsoft forced it through the standardization process, but it doesn't really deserve the title. The "spec" is full of statements like "render this the way that it was done in Office 95". The best solution would be to use ODF, which is supported by all office software.... except Apple's.
  - yuhong 13y ago
    Yea, I mentioned it in my wishlist for Satya: http://hal2020.com/2014/03/03/satya-shuffles-his-leadership/#comment-14919 http://hal2020.com/2014/03/03/satya-shuffles-his-leadership/...

blueblob 13y ago

I agree, the same argument could probably have been made of postscript (ps) at some point in time and while it's still around, most (non-technical) people don't use it.

gioele 13y ago

> PDF is probably the best choice for preserving “design”, but I wouldn’t trust it for preserving content any more than any other format. Always keep a plain text copy. I agree, but have a look at PDF/A (A is for Archiv{e|al}): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF/A http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF/A > PDF/A is an ISO-standardized version of the Portable Document Format (PDF) specialized for the digital preservation of electronic documents. > PDF/A differs from PDF by omitting features ill-suited to long-term archiving, such as font linking (as opposed to font embedding).