8 ms·
I mentioned it in a separate parent, but null purge is - for the stuff I work with - completely non-negotiable. Nulls seem to break virtually everything, just b
by MilStdJunkie 2y ago
I mentioned it in a separate parent, but null purge is - for the stuff I work with - completely non-negotiable. Nulls seem to break virtually everything, just by existing. Furthermore, old-timey PDFs are chock full of the things, for God knows what reason, and a huge amount of data I work with are old-timey PDF.
- toast0 2y ago> Furthermore, old-timey PDFs are chock full of the things, for God knows what reason, and a huge amount of data I work with are old-timey PDF. Probably UCS-2/UTF-16 encoding with ascii data.
- MilStdJunkie 2y agoIt's hard to localize. Early Postscript - PDF software was the wild west, particularly when it comes to the text streams. Something I've noticed is that they're used a LOT in things like randlists (bullet lists), tab leaders, other "space that isn't a space". I'm reminded of how you have to use `{empty}` character refs in lightweight markup like Asciidoc to "hold your place" in a list, in case you need the first element in the list to be an admonition or block. Like so: . {empty} + WARNING: Don't catch yourself on fire! + Pour the gasoline. And the equivalent XML which would be something like <procedure> <step> <warning> Don't catch yourself on fire!</warning> <para>Pour the gasoline.</para> </step> </procedure> This is one of those rare cases where the XML is more elegant than the lightweight markup. That hack with `{empty}` bugs me. Anyways, I'm spitballing that these old-timey nulls I'm seeing are being employed in an equivalent way, some sort of internal bespoke workaround to a format restriction.