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And yet PDF re-writing keeps getting screwed up. Probably because it really is a bad format for this, with the pages of docs notwithstanding.

by TwoBit 6y ago

virgilp 6y ago
I never saw these screw-ups in Acrobat, so maybe the problem is not the format, but Apple?
- dkonofalski 6y ago
  Then you probably don't use Acrobat enough. PDF is a finicky mistress.
  - virgilp 6y ago
    Maybe; but I do have the full suite. Have used it plenty during the pandemic to fill in forms digitally (some that were designed to be filled in digitally, others that were not), both on an iPad and on computers. Sure, I'm not a hardcore professional user but those wouldn't be using Preview anyway; I'd bet my family usage is consistently above average. (also used it before the pandemic - I used to work for Adobe, for 10 years, though not in the Document Cloud group). [edit] I should clarify that "I never personally experienced Acrobat bugs that would corrupt my document", not that they don't exist; am not claiming that Acrobat is flawless, and maybe if I went to dig into the bug tracker I could've found document corruption bugs too, who knows. The format is certainly messy [+], I don't deny that. However, I think in this instance you're letting Apple off the hook too easily - this one is decidedly their screwup, not Adobe's. [+] not the basics of it, that's fine; but the "trying to do too much" part.
    - dkonofalski 6y ago
      I don't think I'm letting Apple off easy because I don't think it's not their fault. I just think that, until we see the document in question, we can't squarely say that it is their fault. Preview and Acrobat both have ways of dealing with junk/bogus data and I feel like that's what's going on here. There must have been some kind of bit switched when the document was "corrected" and it's possible that Acrobat and Preview just resolve that issue differently while both still outputting "valid" PDF files.
izacus 6y ago
Sure, PDF re-writing is one of very clear non-goals when you read the spec. It's designed to be generated, always consistent and then later annotated and marked up. And that doesn't make it read-only. It just makes it not suitable for live text editing just like a PNG isn't suitable for collaborative image work.
- theamk 6y ago
  Eh, "remove empty page" is not "live text editing". I have seen tools struggle with seemingly simple operations, like "take page 1,4 from A and pages 4,6 from B, scale to fit paper size and combine into one file". And those are not some exotic requirements, those are one of the most basic operations people want to do with multi-page documents. Also, did you want to say JPEG isn't suitable for collaborative image work (because it's lossy?). As PNG is a pretty fine exchange format if two people, who prefer different graphical editors, want to work on the same document.

And yet PDF re-writing keeps getting screwed up. Probably because it really is a bad format for this, with the pages of docs notwithstanding.

by TwoBit 6y ago

And yet PDF re-writing keeps getting screwed up. Probably because it really is a bad format for this, with the pages of docs notwithstanding.

virgilp 6y ago

I never saw these screw-ups in Acrobat, so maybe the problem is not the format, but Apple?

dkonofalski 6y ago
Then you probably don't use Acrobat enough. PDF is a finicky mistress.
- virgilp 6y ago
  Maybe; but I do have the full suite. Have used it plenty during the pandemic to fill in forms digitally (some that were designed to be filled in digitally, others that were not), both on an iPad and on computers. Sure, I'm not a hardcore professional user but those wouldn't be using Preview anyway; I'd bet my family usage is consistently above average. (also used it before the pandemic - I used to work for Adobe, for 10 years, though not in the Document Cloud group). [edit] I should clarify that "I never personally experienced Acrobat bugs that would corrupt my document", not that they don't exist; am not claiming that Acrobat is flawless, and maybe if I went to dig into the bug tracker I could've found document corruption bugs too, who knows. The format is certainly messy [+], I don't deny that. However, I think in this instance you're letting Apple off the hook too easily - this one is decidedly their screwup, not Adobe's. [+] not the basics of it, that's fine; but the "trying to do too much" part.
  - dkonofalski 6y ago
    I don't think I'm letting Apple off easy because I don't think it's not their fault. I just think that, until we see the document in question, we can't squarely say that it is their fault. Preview and Acrobat both have ways of dealing with junk/bogus data and I feel like that's what's going on here. There must have been some kind of bit switched when the document was "corrected" and it's possible that Acrobat and Preview just resolve that issue differently while both still outputting "valid" PDF files.

izacus 6y ago

Sure, PDF re-writing is one of very clear non-goals when you read the spec. It's designed to be generated, always consistent and then later annotated and marked up. And that doesn't make it read-only. It just makes it not suitable for live text editing just like a PNG isn't suitable for collaborative image work.

theamk 6y ago
Eh, "remove empty page" is not "live text editing". I have seen tools struggle with seemingly simple operations, like "take page 1,4 from A and pages 4,6 from B, scale to fit paper size and combine into one file". And those are not some exotic requirements, those are one of the most basic operations people want to do with multi-page documents. Also, did you want to say JPEG isn't suitable for collaborative image work (because it's lossy?). As PNG is a pretty fine exchange format if two people, who prefer different graphical editors, want to work on the same document.