Before PDF: John Warnock's 'Camelot' (archive.org) 214
Karl De Abrew writes: "In the Spring of 1991 Dr. John Warnock wrote a paper he
dubbed "Camelot" in which the Adobe Systems Co-founder and
CEO laid out the foundation for what has become Acrobat/PDF.
With the author's permission, Planet PDF is pleased to publish
the full-text of that historic document. [Archived copy here.]" Of course, now it's 2002, and the dream of universal display / printing remains only partly realized; PDFs really have helped to narrow the gap between dream and reality, though.
I couldn't live without it today (Score:3, Troll)
Re:I couldn't live without it today (Score:2, Informative)
Adobe however, does make the worlds best tools for authoring PDF from a variety of sources...
Re:I couldn't live without it today (Score:2)
Adobe however, does make the worlds best tools for authoring PDF from a variety of sources...
I don't know about that; ps2pdf13 makes far nicer screen-optimized documents (smaller too) than I could get Acrobat 4.06 to make under Win32.
Re:I couldn't live without it today (Score:5, Insightful)
In my opinion, it isn't truly good until it can be freely converted back and forth into other usable, edit-able formats.
Which, I note, thanks to the efforts of many, is a criteria that even Microsoft Word doc format is able to meet.
Re:I couldn't live without it today (Score:4, Informative)
PDFs are editable, you just need the right tools [ibmpcug.co.uk].
Re:I couldn't live without it today (Score:2)
Re:I couldn't live without it today (Score:1)
In this way the comparison to GIF/etc is more appropriate.
I can create a file in Photoshop and save it as a PSD file, I get layers, effects, editable type, etc. If I save it as a PNG I just get a copy of the pixels. I can make simple changes but nothing complex, as it is just a single layer.
I can create a file in Word and save it as a DOC file. I get tables, columns, editable pictures etc. If I save it as a PDF I get a copy of the text. I can make simple changes but nothing complex, as it is just a collection of character and lines.
I have edited a white paper we released as a PDF when a product was renamed. I opened it in Acrobad, selected the Text button, clicked in the body text and editted the text.
Re:I couldn't live without it today (Score:3, Insightful)
First of all, it is editable, though not as easily as
Second of all, part of the appeal of PDF is precisely the fact that you can't edit them unless you have some specific tools to do this. Believe it or not, but a lot of businesses find a technology that allows them to share documents electronically without running the risk of someone tampering with them quite convenient. Why do you think it is fax machines are still used as widely as they are?
I happen to think that PDF's are really convenient, they even allow for fill in the blank forms that make it possible (in the Netherlands at least) to interact with all sorts of government agencies without having to go through the tedious process of calling them up, asking them to send a form to you (which they always fail to do unless you remind them at least three times over the course of three weeks), filling it out and sending it back (causing it to "get lost in the mail" (room, I suppose)). Now I just download the PDF, complete the form and mail it back. Done.
Re:I couldn't live without it today (Score:1)
Suppose there is a protected format that doesn't allow one to tamper with the output file. The minute this information reveals its output image, it's not really protected anymore, is it?
Re:I couldn't live without it today (Score:2)
I didn't say they're perfect, but if you're going to tamper with a PDF, you'll need to know what you're doing, whereas any idiot can (unintentionally) mess up a Word doc. But yes, I agree with you in that it's primarily a matter of perception. Or, to be really mean, I'll say it's a document format that lets the layout guys keep their jobs. Let's just say it's the former
Hardcoded paper size (Score:4, Insightful)
At a minimum this means that all internationally distributed PDFs have to come in two variants, A4 and Letter. And you need a screen wide enough to view a whole line of text - no possibility of reformatting into narrower columns for palmtops etc.
There are plenty of good things about PDF, taken as a way to represent a printed page. But it certainly is not a good format to exchange documents that are meant to be readable by everyone.
Re:Hardcoded paper size (Score:2)
With PDF, you know how the document is going to look. It isn't going to get screwed up by all the things that can change the appearance of a Microsoft Word or HTML document, such as fonts and printer drivers.
Re:Hardcoded paper size (Score:2)
There is no general, automatic way to reformat a document to different sizes with results that always look good. What about that long equation? A human is going to have to decide how to break it up into two lines if you want a smaller output. What about that big table? A human is going to have to reformat it.
The more you care about how good your output looks, the less possible it is to do automatic changes on it.
Re:Hardcoded paper size (Score:2)
My understanding is that A4 is a few mm narrower and a few mm taller. So printing an A4 pdf to letter page with "shrink to fit" on will give overly wide side margins, but it isn't too bad. Letter to A4 would give a lot of top or bottom margin. I wouldn't mind a few other options in Acrobat -- keep the header and footer at the same position from the top & bottom, and call me if things truly won't fit in between -- but I do get and send PDF's internationally and it's acceptable.
Palmtops are a problem. They are a lousy way of viewing files, but when you have to, HTML might work, because (if the writer didn't overspecify) it does allow the displaying computer to reformat the text layout to whatever width is desirable. However, HTML often has to be re-written for palmtops. Besides the issue of authoring tools that somehow locked in a minimum width, often people are trying to receive the documents on low bandwidth wireless links. So if you want people to have a good experience viewing your web page on a palm-top, keep the byte count down -- use text only as much as possible, and only as many html tags as strictly needed. Since PDF's tend to be enormous, they won't mix well with palmtops even if you reformatted for the screen size...
Re:Editing not a goal (Score:2)
I like to think of PDF as an output format only. By using a flexible markup system like Docbook [docbook.org], you can export to a number of formats. PDF is excellent (and often required) by book printers. It provides an unambiguous picture of how a book should be laid out.
To me, PDF is a lot like a system executable. You write the document in some portable source code, then compile it for a particular need. Of course, this is a very different philosophy than WYSIWYG edits. Oh well.
RTF! RTF! RTF! (And I don't mean Read The F...) (Score:2)
It's not suffectient for EVERY document, but nearly every word processor on the planet can read (and write) them, and you'd be surprised what can be captured in an RTF file.
The OmniWeb browser uses them for web archives (or did at one time), and I couldn't beleive how beautifully it kept the page appearance the first time I saw it.
I wonder that more people don't standardize on it.
Re:I couldn't live without it today (Score:2, Informative)
Slightly off-topic, but, in response to the
Re:I couldn't live without it today (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think you know what you're talking about! I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I think there a few things to consider. My understanding is that it's "Adobe PDF" and it's a de facto published "standard" controlled by Adobe. PDF is a derivative of PostScript Level 2. It is most definitely proprietary even though the format specification is available. Usually when people say "open standard", they mean that it is a "de jure" standard controlled by a recognized standards body like ISO, and Adobe Systems is a single interest, not a standards body. Another usage of "open standard" with respect to Adobe PDF refers to the fact that it's published and royalty-free. If Microsoft publishes the Word document format, it is still a proprietary format.
The problem with proprietary formats like PDF is that a company who wants to influence the standard cannot join the controlling standards body. So basically if you don't like the direction Adobe Systems is taking with their format, you're screwed unless you have clout with the company. If you're concerned with archiving information for a long period of time or choosing an interoperable format, the proprietary nature of PDF is discouraging.
Don't get me wrong, I like using the PDF format and have produced some nice documents using pdflatex, ebnf2ps, and other free PostScript tools. I just think it's important to understand the limitations of PDF which are primarily that it is 1) a publishing format more than an editing format and 2) Adobe controls it. At work, for example, documents are stored and passed through an editing and publishing workflow as XML, archived as XML, and only rendered to PDF on demand at the end.
I hate to ramble on, but there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding on this topic. Some other people have made the analogy between the JPEG graphics format and a format with layer information like Photoshop's proprietary format. PDF is not designed to carry the types of metadata you might want in a document workflow as well as XML (or SGML), just like JPEG only represents the final rendered and flattened ("published") image from what may have been a multilayer graphic in the editing process. In other words, PDF is not a universal document format when you are concerned with editting or automation which relies on metadata that is not part of the document displayed to a user.
-Kevin
Re:I couldn't live without it today (Score:2)
Re:I couldn't live without it today (Score:2)
And getting into today's projects in 10 years is goiing to be worse. Hell, if you "upgraded" to XP with the product activation, you'll have to crack that just to run the same software!
Re:I couldn't live without it today (Score:5, Informative)
Also while the pdf format is controlled by Adobe, the specs are open and available (contrast this with Microsoft's format which is a complete mystery), you can get the specs from Adobe's site and nothing prevents you from writing code that manipulates pdf files (well yes there are issues with compression algorithm).
This openess is the reason why Apple chose to use pdf as their graphic description language for OS X (older OS versions used QuickDraw). The windows page description language, is, I think, WMF. It's funny to think that the basic page description language used under Unix is Postscript, which is much more closed than PDF.
Open and available specs? Not quite... (Score:1, Troll)
PDF, open YEAH RIGHT!
Re:Open and available specs? Not quite... (Score:2)
Are Adobe employees now moderators on Slashdot?
Re:Open and available specs? Not quite... (Score:2)
PS != eBook!
My valid point was that PDF and its eBook derivative format is NOT open or free, if Dmitry is "violating" IP rights.
Furthermore, I never said everything Adobe does is wrong. Stop stuffing words into my mouth.
Re:Open and available specs? Not quite... (Score:2)
Ignorance is often modded down on
Re:I couldn't live without it today (Score:3, Informative)
I'll admit that I am no expert on PS, and know even less about PDF, but in what respect is PS "more closed" that PDF?! The whole language is publicly published and easily accessible for free to anyone near by a library. There are also countless implementations of PS interpreters.
Re:I couldn't live without it today (Score:2)
Re:I couldn't live without it today (Score:2)
Of course, Adobe PostScript is not just a language specification, it's also an interpreter, and for the latter, you certainly have to pay license fees (and for the standard fonts, too).
Re:I couldn't live without it today (Score:3, Insightful)
Precisely. NeXT chose to license Adobe's PostScript RIP, rather than reimplement it from scratch using the publically available specs. That's doesn't make PostScript any less open. It's a business decision. Brother apparently chose to implement it themselves, which means they don't have to pay a license fee to Adobe (but in the process, they lose the right to use the PostScript trademark). A business decision once again.
Re:I couldn't live without it today (Score:2)
We want to get our harlequin RIP onto linux and off of SGI, we mostly are doing DCS and PS RIP. Any sugesstions?
gigs at vt dot edu
Re:I couldn't live without it today (Score:2)
The person who posted the parent to this posting has a signature which points to a site with the url islinux4you.com. Among other things, this web site has the following inaccurate assertions:
Looking at this, I come up with three possiblities:OK, this islinux4you.com is a troll (Score:3, Funny)
- Sam
Re:I couldn't live without it today (Score:1)
Re:I couldn't live without it today (Score:1)
Profound. (Score:4, Informative)
Gotta love those dreamy nerds.
PDF's Role in Mac OS X (Score:3, Informative)
Previously this was available only though special software which had to be purchased from Adobe. Now the operating system emables me to create documents with the assurance that it will be rendered on anyone's screen as it would have been rendered by my printer.
Beyond that, I know anyone can print their own hard copy of my document without any cross-platform problems. That's something MS Word cannot boast.
Re:PDF's Role in Mac OS X (Score:1)
Re:PDF's Role in Mac OS X (Score:2, Informative)
Or you can get Jaws PDF Creatior
http://www.jawspdf.com/pdf_creator/cost.html
Re:PDF's Role in Mac OS X (Score:2)
Re:Profound. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Profound. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Profound. (Score:1)
Warnock's always had great ideas (Score:2, Informative)
John and I haven't kept in touch in recent years but I wish him the very best of luck with Adobe. He's a very talented man and he deserves success.
df
Re:Warnock's always had great ideas (Score:1)
Re:Warnock's always had great ideas (Score:1)
One clue might be that the troll says "I wish John the best of luck at Adobe" when this paper was written by Dr Warnock "CEO and Co-Founder of Adobe" in 1991.
Re:Warnock's always had great ideas (Score:2)
Another clue can be found in how Photoshop wasn't developed at Adobe. The original developers for Photoshop had gone to Apple before approaching that printer font company known as Adobe.
less is more PDF & Multiple Master Fonts (Score:3, Informative)
Later on Adobe did better than this, with the Multiple Master Font idea --- even if a font or a subset of the font is not embedded (this can seriously bloat file sizes as the font encodings are a lot of overhead for a small document), Acrobat reader (or some other display device) can render the font pretty well because it knows how to "fake" the correct appearance based on similarities to combinations of master fonts. It's a very clever approach.
OSX, PDF, and Windows (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:OSX, PDF, and Windows (Score:2)
Re:OSX, PDF, and Windows (Score:1)
1. It's buggy. (create a bitmap to cover your entire window, and it'll be a pixel shy at the bottom and right sides).
2. It uses a mix of pixel coordinates and real-world units.
3. You have to switch to drawing things in a kind of reverse-polish notation if you're doing any kind of transformations. For example, drawing text so that the line goes vertically upwards can get real messy. Especially when you start measuring the bounds of it.
It probably needs a little time to mature -- heck, the documentation is 'pre-release'. But for now, I think a lot of people are going to stick with GDI for regular windows development.
Of course, I'll happily be proved wrong.
Si
Very useful (Score:2, Informative)
However, once one learns LyX, it would seem, one can author documents at least (with color graphics, no less) on Linux in a format that can be exported to either PDF or HTML, and viewed or printed on any platform with a PDF viewer, including eBooks, Linux, Mac and Windows. This makes things far more convenient.
They Certainly Changed the Sales Plans (Score:2, Interesting)
I assume they eventually got paid for including it in the printer drivers in Mac OS and Windows, but initially, they were just giving it away. In fact, they also gave away the rendering tools to just about everybody who owned another Adobe product. Of course the net result was that it quickly became indispensable.
Re:They Certainly Changed the Sales Plans (Score:1)
The puzzling thing is why they don't produce unix versions of their latest acroread versions. This opens up a gap in their product range which open-source viewers could potentially evolve to bypass any protection scheme.
LL
Re:They Certainly Changed the Sales Plans (Score:1)
Note that the paper indicates they were originally planning on selling the viewers. I'll bet there is an internal political story there.
In fact, Adobe initially used to sell the Acrobat Reader software for something like $99. I don't remember the exact ammount, but there was a charge. This was changed in the later versions of Acrobat Reader.
In fact the initial target market for Acrobat was internal corporate documentation in a mixed computing environment. It was only later that Adobe decided to give out the Acrobat Reader for free and turned PDF into what it is today
Its nice for what it does, but hardly a revolution (Score:4, Insightful)
First, the filesize is ridiculous.
The interface needs a lot of work, unless I have a scrolling mouse I won't even bother reading one. The little hand widget must go. Also, I don't want to have to resize my screen to be able to read half the poorly produced PDFs out there. No use in jumping to the next page when I can only display 2/3 of the current one. So back to the little hand.
They're non-editable for the most part once you make them.
They are in a closed format and controlled by a litigious company unafraid to use the DMCA for their own questionable ends.
The plug-ins are notoriously buggy.
Its great for sending something straight to the laser printer, but as an on-line advance it really just stinks.
Re:Its nice for what it does, but hardly a revolut (Score:2)
Yes, but personally, I see it as a trend; Moore's Law, HD technology, and better broadband will make this trivial.
>The interface needs a lot of work
Eh, its just an implementation detail, isn't it?
>They're non-editable for the most part once you make them.
Only because Adobe wants to charge a lot for Acrobat. Were PDF as common as
>They are in a closed format
Isn't the actual format open? For instance, xPDF isn't a hack, it uses the open specs, right?
>controlled by a litigious company unafraid to use the DMCA for their own questionable ends.
Yeah, no argument there.
>The plug-ins are notoriously buggy.
Another implementation detail. Fix the plugins. I am not aware of something specific to PDF that causes that.
Re:Its nice for what it does, but hardly a revolut (Score:2)
I dunno - the complete 423 page manual for Macromedia's Fireworks (with tons of embedded graphics) is about 6.5 megs and the print quality is light years ahead of the same document reproduced in HTML. That doesn't seem outrageous to me.
They're non-editable for the most part once you make them.
I think you're truly asking for magic software that can take input from any existing application, make it universally readable while retaining the formatting and also allow you to make changes to the complex formatting within the document.
PDF is revolutionary because it enables organizations to easily take documents intended for print and quickly/cheaply make them freely available electronically for a multitude of users. Think of all of the forms, manuals, etc. that are now available because they could just run it through Acrobat.
Re:Its nice for what it does, but hardly a revolut (Score:2, Informative)
P.S.:And this has a score of 4? :-(
Re:Its nice for what it does, but hardly a revolut (Score:3, Informative)
First, the filesize is ridiculous.
If you're comparing to plain text, yes. Otherwise, PDF have a built-in format that allows the producer to compress the PDF's streams (ie text and images) with a LZW algorithm.
They are in a closed format
These are java libraries for creating and editing PDFs :
pj [etymon.com][Open Source, GPL]
Big Faceless [faceless.org][Commercial w/ Evaluation]
retepPDF [retep.org.uk][Open Source, LGPL]
Java Pdf Library [lowagie.com][Open Source, LGPL]
PDFGo [pdfgo.com][commercial]
rugPDF0.20 [rug.ac.be][Open Source, LGPL]
By the way the closed format has an open specification : http://partners.adobe.com/asn/developer/acrosdk/d
NO, NO, NO (Score:3, Insightful)
With HTML, the page contures and changes to match your environment. Width, Height, Font, Color, etc.
If a web page made up of PDFs is designed on a 1024x768 screen, anyone with a 640x480 screen is really screwed. Imagine Lynx trying to read PDFs!
PDFs are great for documents that WILL be printed on a standard and consisten sized media (letter-sized paper) but it's serious drawbacks are that it doesn't scale, resize, change fonts etc. Try printing an A4 PDF on letter-sized paper, or vice versa.
In fact, I've seen PDFs made quite badly. The problem is, the creator holds all the cards, and the user is screwed. With some PDFs, the designers use damn tiny fonts, and huge margins, making the printout look like suck.com. With HTML, we can override the font settings, we set the margins, and in general, the user simply controls exactly how they want it.
That's the difference. PDFs put the creator in too-much control, and HTML puts the end user's in total control.
Screw PDF, I like HTML.
Re:NO, NO, NO (Score:2)
|_ Edit
|_Preferences
|_Advanced
{X} Load Images
{ } Enable Java
{ } Enable JavaScript
{ } Enable Style Sheets
--
In HTML, the user can turn off any feature they don't like. With PDF, the creator decides what you will and won't like! Go ahead and use CSS. it will make pages look exactly as you designed them to (to most users) and will look as we wants it to look (for those few of use that disable CSS).
Re:YES YES YES (Score:2)
A few comments from someone who's actually used it (Score:2)
PDF should not be used as a replacement for HTML. Just as people should be shot for making flash only sites, they should be shot for just slapping a bunch of images or PDFs up, and calling it a 'website'. PDF has its uses, and the problem is that there are still a fair number of folks using the technology incorrectly. Likewise, there are folks who still try to send HTML e-mails to me. You'll do better if you attempt to educate folks about the technology than just blowing it off.
First, the filesize is ridiculous.
Yes and no. When handled correctly, it's quite reasonable. The problems are when someone scans in a 50 page document, and saves it all as images, with no compression, and you're looking at 65-70k per page. When you start comparing similar, correctly formatted items (not too many folks have graphics laden 300 page manuals in MS word hanging around), but when you compare it to a similar EPS file, or even something pre-press, like Quark or PageMaker, it's about right. For those folks who need to have the memo or whatever saved electronically exactly as it came in, well, there's options for
The interface needs a lot of work, unless I have a scrolling mouse I won't even bother reading one. The little hand widget must go. Also, I don't want to have to resize my screen to be able to read half the poorly produced PDFs out there. No use in jumping to the next page when I can only display 2/3 of the current one. So back to the little hand.
This is an application issue, and not a document standards issue. Personally, I use the pageup/pagedown keys normally.
They're non-editable for the most part once you make them.
Yet another pre-conceived falsehood. The problem is that you have Acrobat Reader, which only reads PDF files. There's a similar companion program for MS Word for those who want to read MS Word files, but don't want to shell out to be able to write them.
However, in this case, last year, when my roommate was entering the Games Workshop WH40k Grand Tournament, they had put up the application as a PDF. Unfortunately, wanted you to print it out, and write in the fields. I don't like that concept, so I opened it up in a full copy of Acrobat, and make it a little more functional. (added some fields, some automatic calculations, etc.)
They are in a closed format and controlled by a litigious company unafraid to use the DMCA for their own questionable ends.
*yawn*. You're starting to pull at straws, man. You could make that argument about just about any company who had a software product that they're not giving away for free. If you want to talk about some real hard asses, look up Kodak's Picture CD format.
The plug-ins are notoriously buggy.
Once again, straws. I'm guessing my definition of 'notorious' and yours differ greatly. It's rock-solid on a Mac. You might just want to move to a more stable OS.
Its great for sending something straight to the laser printer, but as an on-line advance it really just stinks.
Once again. You have to look at folks who use it correctly. There are times when PDF is the better format. Any sort of application or form that needs to be printed and signed can be filled on online, then printed, signed, and sent in. You get your pretty-printed version, and you reduce text-entry and the possibility for user error on the backend. [You just queue it up, and have someone verify they didn't change anything when you get the signed copy].
Personally, I feel that Flash and HTML3 were crappy advancements, due to the amount that people misuse them. The same with JavaScript and CSS. There are right times, and wrong times for just about any technology. There will never be one product which will solve every problem that folks might have, and to think that it might ever happen is just plain ignorant. PDF fills certain niche markets better than HTML ever will. Likewise, HTML better fills other niches. Just because you don't have the same uses that other folks have doesn't mean the product 'just stinks'.
So, which path did they take? (Score:1)
It sounds like they went with IPS, but how divergent from Postscrip is PDF (or Acrobat Exchange format)? Also, does anyone know if anyone other than Apple uses Display Postscript?
Display Ghostscript (Score:2, Informative)
It's actually not complete, and I don't know what's going on with it currently. I had seriously toyed with the idea of writing a window manager based off the library, a la' OSX, but from what I gathered the lib wasn't quite in a useable state. You can get it on debian via "apt-get install libdps" and there are dev packages too.
I would seriously love to see someone (particularly the Windowmaker & GNUStep team, as it fits them best) create my project of the DPS window manager and Widget set. I don't know how useful it would be, but I think it would definitely compel people to move forward. The URL for DPS programming info is here [adobe.com], if anyone is interested.
Re:So, which path did they take? (Score:1)
OpenWindows (under Sun Solaris) can, NeXTStep does (but I'm presuming that's what you mean by Apple), some SGI Irix X stuff can.
Q/A (Score:1)
And even when it doesn't bluescreen in my experience it's better to reboot it after generation of a bunch of PDFs just to be sure that the mess in kernel structures Distiller driver (usually) causes does not stay there.
This Post Intentionally Left Blank (Score:2, Interesting)
And will someone please tell me what's up with those "This page intentionally left blank". Not only is it contradictive, but a waste of paper/time/etc.
Re:This Post Intentionally Left Blank (Score:2)
My favorite page was a right-to-the point message on a Government intern application:
"This Page is Blank".
Now mind you, because it was an offical document, it means the offical opinion of the US Government is: that page is Blank!
It just reminds me of going up to an officer at some military facility and getting direction to Area 51. Area 51 may not exist according to the government, but you can get directions to it by offical government personell.
Re:This Post Intentionally Left Blank (Score:2, Insightful)
I second that anti-PDF notion... PDF puts full control in the hands of the creators and practically no control in the hands of the users. HTML will look damn good at any resolution, in the font I choose, with or without images as I see fit, with the margins that I want it to have.
You're not getting it, the whole point of
The reason you have no control over the content of the
At the same time, the reason PostScript and i belive according to the artical the Camalot project was created it so that Font, Objects, Content and Formatting is expressed the SAME way regardless of generation, machine or platform, and so letting you change the formatting (margins and all) kinda defeats the prupose doesn't it?
Re:This Post Intentionally Left Blank (Score:2)
PDF is ONLY useful when you have a document that you want to be printed out somewhere else on the same-sized media. It is not a format for online viewing as it has been used. I couldn't give less of a damn if it looks different on my system than on anyone elses. I want it to print out they way I want it, and someone else wants to print it out differently. HTML respects that, and makes no attempt to FORCE the viewer to see it in any particular way.
One of the worst things a web designer can do is attempt to force a user to view it a certain way. To avoid it
PDF should not have a market... PS does just fine for print shops and printers, and in no case is it okay to force a particular layout/font/size/etc. on the end users of your documents.
Here's an example in case you still don't get it... News papers use a rather tall and wide format... So lets say a newspaper wants to release an online archive of the papers. A monstrocity of a PDF (like that would be) would be damn near impossible to print for those users that don't have ghostscript/Acrobat, and would be pretty damn miserable for anyone to try to read (It would be like reading a letter-sized PDF on a Palm/WinCE device. After a lot of size to side scrolling, you won't give a damn how the publisher intended it to be read! What you will want at that point is a format that will automatically format itself to be easially readable on any size screen: HTML.
Have I grounded my point in clearly enough yet?
Prepress industry (Score:3, Interesting)
In the old days, there was a lot of press approval and proofs being sent via the ad. agency to the end user for approval. With PDF, even the end user can fire up PDF reader on their own computer and view the electronic proofs, it is not color accurate (looking at the screen), but for most part (especially small cheap run), it works well.
The same PDF sometimes also get on the RIP (Rasterized Image Processor) for output, this assures same results from the electonic proofs. (accuracy is very important in this industry)
Major problem now is sometimes a prepress shop get one job done and sent to other for output to film or CTP (to plate), the PDF files does not have fonts embeded (PDF have this "feature"), then, it will become a hunt for the right fonts.
Prepress shops have mixed feelings for PDF, most that I talked to see it as a constructive technology.
Re:Prepress industry (Score:2)
First off, this is not meant to be flamebait, which I guess is the surest way to get modded down. From what I understand of PDF at professional printing houses is they don't much care for it at the moment at all. Most of the ones my company has worked with definitely prefer Quark, or some other type of raw file format. Apparently PDF is still way too clever to get a proper output to the press machines, and tends to cause a lot of glitches.
Most of that realm is way outside my personal understanding of printing. PDF has always done a really outstanding of job of printing to a laser printer for me from either FreeBSD or Windows. The only thing I know for sure is that there's quite a difference between a professional level print house and a laser printer.
The only reason I mention this here is that I know Adobe wants to make PDF "the" file format for professional level needs. It would be nice to see them succeed in getting PDF working as nicely at both the user and professional level. It'd simplify a lot of processes. Especially keeping fonts together with documents.
MS & PDF (Score:2, Interesting)
By the way, the most easiest way to covert MS Word doc to PDF without Acrobat would be Adobe's website, they offer 5 free online file conversion (supporting many source formats). Might be useful for some of you.
Re:MS & PDF (Score:1)
;)
Re:MS & PDF (Score:1)
Re:MS & PDF (Score:1)
http://www.et.dtu.dk/Software/GhostWord/Index.h
It's a free(beer)ware interface to Ghostscript that works from within MS-Office applications, and enables conversion to a
I don't know about you... (Score:2, Interesting)
Besides, even with pros, acrobat gives WYSIWYG, embeded fonts, compression for text and images and so on.... i think the size overhead for all this is worth every bit it takes up...
And even if you don't agree, which is more moronic, sending in MS Publisher
PDF Proprietry - what about 'Portable HTML' (Score:2)
All it would take (IMHO) is an extended HTML document which contained each individual HTML page in < PAGE > <
All the browser would have to be extended to do would be split up the pages, and decode the image information. Or, a simple parser could chop it into its component pages and images. Voila, a single-file multi-part document viewable by any browser.
Why is this better than a zipped set of HTML pages? For one it misses the unzipping and saving stage, making it as immediate as PDF. Secondly, the PHTML generator would do link checking and remunging ensuring local links within the document was completely self contained.
Any thoughts?
Re:PDF Proprietry - what about 'Portable HTML' (Score:2)
Re:PDF Proprietry - what about 'Portable HTML' (Score:2)
Re:PDF Proprietry - what about 'Portable HTML' (Score:3, Informative)
It has not been proposed because HTML is not a page description language. It's a document structuring language, even if a lot of people do not understand the difference. Its is simply the wrong tool. HTML displays a document using information about its structure (title, paragraphs), to an arbitrary media. A page description language is about describing precisely the graphical structure (x,y position of all elements).
Take a arbitrary page layout (say a magazine - a paper one), and ask yourself, can I describe this with HTML? The answer is no. HTML and PDF have different goals. Trying to use one for the other is not a good idea. Use the right tool.
A much better candidate would be the SVG format [w3.org], which is based on XML, open and has all the needed features. It is a true vector graphic file format. The only problem is, it is not widely supported (and maybe the font embedding mechanism is not as good).
Then again, PDF does the job nicely -- and is widely supported. While you can embed proprietary features in PDF, so can you with an HTML file (simply by including a GIF file). In fact if you take the current HTML technology, as far as I know, the font embedding mechanism used for HTML is completly proprietary.
Maybe this issue is more complicated than Adobe = BAD Open Source = GOOD
As to why PDF has better compression that an compressed html page. The difference is that the compression is done inside the file, so each type of data is compressed with a different compression algorithm. Also PDF has a feature that is called object reuse, the basic idea is that if an element is present multiple time in a document, it will only be stored once (perfect compression if you want). If you design your html document carefully, you can get this, but more often, machine generated html is very redundant.
Re:PDF Proprietry - what about 'Portable HTML' (Score:2)
I doubt if that is correct. There are probably other reasons it may not have been proposed, but that certainly isnt one of them.
It's a document structuring language, even if a lot of people do not understand the difference.
Actually the differentation was lost fairly early on in HTML, and was only really made absolute again in HTML 4.
But thats irrelevant to my point. HTML+CSS gives you content, structure, and page description. Didnt I already mention having all external files incuded in the bundle. Was I talking about something only in terms of page description? Or did you just bring up some arbitrary points with no relevance to what I was saying?
Its is simply the wrong tool. HTML displays a document using information about its structure (title, paragraphs), to an arbitrary media.
Actually incorrect, for reasons you have already mentioned. Are you getting yourself confused? An HTML browser does the display. HTML basically only marks up predefined (and somewhat content-null) structural components.
A page description language is about describing precisely the graphical structure (x,y position of all elements).
I was talking about a vendor-neutral method of distributing multi-part hypertextual documentation in a single easily-parsed file. Who limited that definition to 'page description language'?
Re:PDF Proprietry - what about 'Portable HTML' (Score:2)
Despite the original intention HTML has almost NEVER been used as a document structuring language but as an easy (and really bad) page description language. Nobody uses HTML to structure their documents; they use it to display their documents. HTML has always been a bastard between page description and document structure and does neither terribly well. It was originally concieved as a document structuring language (with tags like P, STRONG, CITE, BLOCKQUOTE, H1, H2 etc.) but reflecting some confusion between structure and display it always included some display tags. With no other mechanism for defining display, people used the structure tags to define display. People used BLOCKQUOTE not because they were quoting a block of text but because they wanted margins on either side. As it developed HTML was increasingly encrusted with display tags (B, I, FONT, etc.) and hacks, particularly using TABLE to position elements. Because display is what people wanted. Unfortunately since it was never designed to do that it never did it very well and now doesn't do document structure very well either (on the few occasions someone may want to use it for that purpose). Despite these fundamental flaw HTML was a success because it was easy - attempts to address these flaws have undermined that initial advantage.
This is the gordian knot XML is designed cut. XML will handle document structure and CSS and someday XSL (eXtensible Stylesheet Language) will handle display/page description. Hopefully each component will be both more powerful for their respective function and remain easy to use (XML in my opinion succeeds in this, XSL I don't know enough about but I have high hopes).
Re:PDF Proprietry - what about 'Portable HTML' (Score:2)
With HTML in seperate files than the images, the HTML can be quickly loaded, taking up few resources. The images may or may not be loaded at the user's option, and the font/layout will match the user preferences.
The best part is that it can easially be edited by hand using modest system resources to view/edit.
Re:PDF Proprietry - what about 'Portable HTML' (Score:2)
CSS has some allowances for print-specific layout and page breaks. I think between them you'll get what you want, but it won't be as nice and controllable as PDF.
Re:PDF Proprietry - what about 'Portable HTML' (Score:2)
Only last week did I find out there's already a solution that does exactly this: HTMLDOC (See http://www.easysw.com/htmldoc/ [easysw.com]) It's free as in beer, but not totally free as in speech, since it's GPL'd, limiting your rights much more than a BSD license would.
It's not a replacement for PDFs at all though: in fact, one of the things it can do is make beautifully formatted PDFs (or PS) from HTML files. It even has some fairly useful formatting options to support books and such.
This is a very nice program - I am VERY impressed, so much so that I'd like to see full HTML editors that understand the HTMLDOC extended tags in Konqueror, Mozilla, Netscape 6.next, etc., and also see that these and other browsers implement the HTMLDOC filter as a checkbox option when printing an HTML file.
HTMLDOC supports HTML 3.2 and some 4.0, and is supposed to support type 1 & 2 CSS in the next release.
Highly recommended. It's clearly not the right format for everything, and it's clearly not a page layout program, but it is applicable in a great many situations. It seems to bridge the gap between web/dynamic, page, and distribution formats quite well. It's even rich enough that a simple word processor could be built using it - perhaps a bit more like "HTMLroff" than Word, but then that's not a bad thing...
Ummmm.... (Score:2)
is there a non-pdf version available?
LaTex? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:LaTex? (Score:2)
Meanwhile, PostScript is much more. It's a programming language designed for laying out page content. You can do some pretty funky stuff with PostScript. I've seena PostScript library (a 'dict') that rendersOpenGL models (not ray-tracing, but surface shading that's still convincing).
The PostScript/PDF relationship is analogous to C and pre-processed C.
Re:LaTex? (Score:2)
Most DVI drivers will let you put Postscript into a TeX document that will come out nice on a postscript printer.
I've been attempting to convert some of our web page catalogn data into TeX so that it prints out better. The text is great but the tables just don't have a modern fluffy look that is so common in modern catalogs.
I've been using pdflatex which take LaTeX input and makes a pdf file directly.
Re:LaTex? (Score:5, Insightful)
and the biggest advantage of PDF:
I'm sure there are other differences, but even many people I know simply use pdfLaTeX now to generate PDFs from LaTeX markup instead of the old DVIs, so presumably even they see an advantage in Adobe's format. When it comes down to it, I suspect that PDF's font embedding, better handling of other embedded content, and on top of that simply its pervasiveness are the biggest factors. Anyone is welcome to correct me on any of this, however.
Re:LaTex? (Score:2)
"Secure content" I consider a point against PDF -- it won't work, but it provides jobs for lawyers.
Other than that, how proprietary are these formats? Can you write an open-source/free PDF editor or converter program without running afoul of Adobe patents, copyrights, or trademarks? Has anyone written such programs? And for DVI, same questions.
Re:LaTex? (Score:2)
Obligatory monty python reference. (Score:2)
I dont see what the hubbub is.. its only a model.
Only partially realised? (Score:2, Insightful)
NeXTStep realised that dream, as does Mac OS X. Apple is now the largest Unix OS vendor on the planet, so it's fair to say that the majority of Unix systems now realise this dream.
If we discount Windows users, on the basis that they are not qualified to make informed decisions about anything (or else they wouldn't be using Windows) it looks like that dream has been mainly realised, in fact.
Hooray!
Both PostScript and PDF are bad ideas (Score:2)
That's a terrible idea.
The basic problem with executable documents is that about all you can do is execute them. Editing them is tough. Conversion to another format is tough (PDF->HTML translation often sucks.) Search engines have trouble indexing executable documents reliably.
Compare HTML, which is declarative, not executable. It's much easier to do things with an HTML document than a PostScript, PDF, or TeX document. You can reformat for a different screen size, you can view it in a text browser, and you can even listen to it in an audio browser.
What PDF and PostScript tend to actually look like is a big block of canned code at the the beginning that converts whatever the generating program likes to generate, followed by the actual content in some nonstandard format. That's a pain to deal with.
Microsoft's .DOC format, while deliberately obscure and inconsistent, is a declarative format which can do most of the things PDF can. But you can also re-edit a .DOC document, which doesn't work on PDF or PostScript.
Now that we have enough experience with machine-readable documents to know what we need and don't need in the format, we don't have to use executable formats. PDF as a distribution format should go, and PostScript's role should be limited to printing.
Wouldn't it be more appropriate... (Score:2)
Re:CAMELOT MY EYE (Score:3, Insightful)
And what's wrong with that? Adobe is not a charity - and even if they were charities aren't very effective without the ALMIGHTY DOLLARS that the greedy people pursuing said dollars donate.
What about truth? What about freedom?!
They're nice and all, but you can't eat them. Also, they don't seem particularly relevent.
What about human rights...
Again seems irrelevant to a portable document format. I suppose now you can send a nicely formatted petition electronically. Is that what you are getting at?
You can't help them very much without the ALMIGHTY DOLLAR, as I said before truth and freedom (and petulant whining) are nice, but you can't eat them.
It's all well and good to be altruistically concerned with the welfare of everybody in the world but most people, including yourself, are far more concerned with the welfare of themselves and their families. Starvation in Somalia becomes only an academic concern when you yourself are starving. Altruism is a rich (or at least comfortable) mans game and you don't get rich (or even comfortable) unless you pursue the ALMIGHTY DOLLAR (at least a little) usually by being employed by someone who is pursuing the ALMIGHTY DOLLAR with great zeal.
Warnock like everybody else is primarily concerned about his own welfare, but to become wealthy he must be concerned about other peoples welfare. He must invent or sell something that will meet those other peoples needs sufficiently that they will spend their own money on his product. To produce and sell that product he must be concerned with the needs (money, health-care, vacations) of the people he will hire to help him sell his product to make himself rich. To get the money he needs to hire those employees he must concern himself with the needs of investors and fund their retirement so they won't starve when they are old. Finding himself a wealthy man. He is forced whether he wants to or not to give a large portion of his wealth to the maintenance of his government and to government charity to several hundred more people. Finally after inadvertently meeting the communications, employment, retirement and charitable needs of hundreds of thousands of people Warnock gives vastly greater sums than you or I to the poor and oppressed.
FLAMEBAIT????? (Score:2)