I wish more of the world considered PDF and Flash to be obsolete/deprecated technologies. The amount of energy wasted on these rotten old techs is such a shame.
That said, if someone has to do it, I felt better about PDF.js than I feel about the Chrome implementation, for a few reasons. Higher level language means less surface area for vulnerabilities (though I guess it's never been perfect, either). Being a huge and complex project in JavaScript means it works the JS engine and renderer in the browser pretty hard and can provide a great test suite for the browser itself. Being JavaScript also means improvements in the VM (whether performance or security) automatically improve the PDF renderer (though I guess PDFium is quite a bit faster already, so that's less of a benefit on the PDF.js side).
Honestly, though, these are dead technologies, to me. I use them only when absolutely necessary. I don't have Flash installed on any of my machines and have no intention to do so. I do have to look at PDFs now and then, but I don't like it. I'm tired of people slapping the paper skeuomorph onto web pages. Web pages are better than paper, in every dimension, so stop imitating paper! Having to load up a buggy, quirky, weird-looking, plugin to view the damned thing is just adding insult to injury.
So...let'em die. But, I guess if Mozilla feels like they need to keep providing it for now, I'm fine with them doing whatever they have to do to make it cost as little as possible. Mozilla has wasted enough money over the years on weird projects; I guess supporting Flash and PDF count as another one. (Even though I like PDF.js a lot, for making PDF less of an asshole.)
Honest question, if PDF is obsolete, what technology/format was it made obsolete by that is not dependent on the cloud like Google Docs? What lightweight format is there that I can export my .doc's to that I can send to my clients?
We're speaking completely different languages here, I'm afraid. I don't "send .docs to my clients". I haven't opened Word in a decade or more. I occasionally share a Google Doc with people I'm working with, but only for the collaboration features, not because I want them to see what a nice font I selected for the headers.
I recently removed PDF export of invoices from my company shopping cart, and converted it to use an HTML document instead; I spent a couple of days of my labor removing PDF functionality. Same style sheet, looks the same when printed, provides the same information, but no external tools needed. PDF is an anti-pattern, and if I'm working with someone and they send me a PDF I instantly like them less (except in the very rare circumstance that it's necessary to print the thing, like signing documents, though even that can be mostly automated away with tech).
So, I'll answer your question with my own: What are you sending your clients in PDF? Why? Why isn't it online yet? Why are you manually creating these docs, whatever they are, and emailing them to someone? I switched payment providers because my last one mailed me a PDF form, and asked me to sign and send it back. I said "no thanks", and signed up with someone who lives in this century.
There's very little that people do with PDF that can't be done better some other way.
> What are you sending your clients in PDF? Why? Why isn't it online yet?
What do you mean by "online"? Obviously PDFs can be online. Are you implying some clunky proprietary webapp that must allow me to share something?
Let's say some project is going to post a schematic and I'd like to read it. I'd much rather grab that in a PDF than the native format of whatever CAD program they used to capture it (although obviously the latter is necessary for editing). You're either saying that CAD programs should print-to-file as vector-perfect HTML (why?), or that local programs should be deprecated?
To me, PDF is just a nicer page-precise layout compared to PS. And for many locally-saved documents, I'd rather not even involve my web browser - just a simple evince <file>.
Is the PDF support on nonfree platforms really that bad that it's created such hate for the whole format? It sounds like that failing is better attributed to the operating system itself.
"Obviously PDFs can be online. Are you implying some clunky proprietary webapp that must allow me to share something?"
No, I'm suggesting that the web is an open standard, available to more people than any computing platform in history, that can do everything PDF can do, and incomparably more. If there are workflows that rely on PDF, the workflow is probably wrong, and could be improved by a web standards based implementation.
Passing around files is the least common denominator, the stop-gap solution until something good comes along, it's not the optimal solution where we decide, "OK, that's perfect! Let's keep doing it this way for 20 years."
"You're either saying that CAD programs should print-to-file as vector-perfect HTML (why?), or that local programs should be deprecated?"
I'm saying neither. That's why we have SVG. All browsers render it. It is a powerful and pretty well-designed and well-defined vector-based image format that has universal availability across nearly any device. PDF may be powerful but it is not particularly well-designed or particularly well-defined (as evidenced by the lack of good non-Adobe implementations, and as evidenced by how many elements of the PDF format have had to be riddled out by experimentation, rather than merely following a spec).
"Is the PDF support on nonfree platforms really that bad that it's created such hate for the whole format? It sounds like that failing is better attributed to the operating system itself."
I don't know what you're asking here. I primarily use Linux and have for 20+ years. PDF support on free platforms is historically worse than on Mac or Windows, though it's kinda clunky on every OS.
PDF served its purpose, and was good for its time and place (I recall with great excitement when OpenOffice first got PDF export that worked, and it was the feature that convinced a number of people I knew at the time to switch from MS Office, which didn't yet have PDF export without additional software). It's just done, now, and it's a good time to move on.
Your comments look a lot more like someone on a personal vendetta against PDF, for whatever reason, than an argument grounded in reality. There are people whose usecases are entirely different from yours, who do not want PDF to die because it is immensely useful.
I work in printing and graphic design, and PDF is irreplacable. It's literally the only dependable vector graphics interchange format that exists. Would you have us going back to passing around zip files of PageMaker documents?
SVG is a laughable train wreck for any use where it's imperative that files look the same across devices, media and apps. I've yet to encounter a non-trivial SVG file that renders exactly the same across, say, Chrome/FF/IE or Illustrator/CorelDRAW/Inkscape. I don't know whether the format is trash or all implementations are, but the end user experience is awful either way.
Now, none of this means it's a good idea to throw random PDF files at the web when HTML would have worked as well or better. If your argument would have stopped at that I would have agreed with you.
That's all fine. I don't care about that environment or use case; it's not harming anyone. I'm talking about PDF being considered an important part of web browsers. That's what I think should end.
I was unaware of the issues you bring up about SVG; it's not a problem I've seen in a while (though I remember it being an issue many years ago going back and forth between Inkscape and Illustrator, and of course browsers had awful SVG support for a long while). But, professionals in specialist industries can use whatever tools they like, without making the rest of the world carry around that baggage. So, carry on using PDF for this purpose, just don't ask every browser to support it. It shouldn't be a part of the web anymore, even if PDF still has a place in pre-press, or something.
I too had plenty of problems using Free PDF viewers a decade ago. But these days, I can't recall the last time I saw something that rendered wrong.
To me, on Debian, it's a format that "just works". Even nicer than HTML which either wants to commandeer an already-running heavyweight browser and possibly load arbitrary unknown baggage from the Internet, or be half-viewed with lynx.
You seem to be primary arguing for replacing it with SVG, which probably has merit. But honestly I'm just not invested enough in choosing the "perfect" format to weigh one versus the other. You're effectively saying the two have similar functionality but for a lack of a format PDF spec, but as PDF currently functions that argument is quite abstract.
Furthermore, why doesn't Firefox's "Print to file" have SVG as an output option? It's kind of hard to adopt a different format when software that's supposedly directly geared for it doesn't have the option to use it.
> Passing around files is the least common denominator, the stop-gap solution until something good comes along
Erm sure. But that "something good" certainly isn't centralized web silos and nouveau proprietary software marketed as "open web". So we'll continue with files until some feasible user-centric replacement technology is on the horizon.
If somebody sends a pdf invoice then i can save the invoice. An html invoice on the web needs to be printed to paper or pdf in order to be part of a financial administration.
If it stays on a webserver, the document likely dissappears.
My ebook reader (a Kindle) uses an HTML-based format. No ebook reader I know of uses PDF.
My favorite websites to read are not PDF. "Fidelity" is not important to me...being easy to read on the device I'm reading it on is what is important to me. In fact, I find it painful to read a PDF on my computer, whereas I read tons of documentation on web pages without trouble.
Finally, a web page today can look like pretty much anything, including a "book" layout. PDF isn't necessary or useful. Fonts can be embedded, styling can be done down to the pixel level, scalable illustrations can be embedded in SVG, etc. The only reason people don't lay out stuff on the web like a PDF is because it's not as functional as treating it like a web page.
I have genuinely never experienced this, even on a Kindle. The books I read have pleasant layouts, which I feel is only because the designer works on a fixed page.
That said, I have been reading material from http://www.accountingcoach.com and the author has got good design on pretty much all browsers I've used, including my iPhone so I suppose it can be done.
PDF is the preferred format for reading textbooks and journal articles on e-readers. With a large-size e-reader it works well. The only real competitor to PDF is DjVu.
It is not the default format, and if you'd ever tried to read a PDF formatted for big screens on a Kindle, you'd know that it's a horrible experience. The default format for Kindle is mobi, and many others used epub. My point was that though I read books exclusively in digital form, I never read them in PDF format. I don't miss the "fidelity" of PDF; I want the book to be comfortably readable on the device I'm reading it on, and PDF is never the best choice for that.
The Kindle does have PDF support and has for many years. However, people rarely use PDF support on small-screen devices, and nearly all Kindles are small-screen.
That said, if someone has to do it, I felt better about PDF.js than I feel about the Chrome implementation, for a few reasons. Higher level language means less surface area for vulnerabilities (though I guess it's never been perfect, either). Being a huge and complex project in JavaScript means it works the JS engine and renderer in the browser pretty hard and can provide a great test suite for the browser itself. Being JavaScript also means improvements in the VM (whether performance or security) automatically improve the PDF renderer (though I guess PDFium is quite a bit faster already, so that's less of a benefit on the PDF.js side).
Honestly, though, these are dead technologies, to me. I use them only when absolutely necessary. I don't have Flash installed on any of my machines and have no intention to do so. I do have to look at PDFs now and then, but I don't like it. I'm tired of people slapping the paper skeuomorph onto web pages. Web pages are better than paper, in every dimension, so stop imitating paper! Having to load up a buggy, quirky, weird-looking, plugin to view the damned thing is just adding insult to injury.
So...let'em die. But, I guess if Mozilla feels like they need to keep providing it for now, I'm fine with them doing whatever they have to do to make it cost as little as possible. Mozilla has wasted enough money over the years on weird projects; I guess supporting Flash and PDF count as another one. (Even though I like PDF.js a lot, for making PDF less of an asshole.)