PDF Crap!
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Who forgot to close his tag then?
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.” Why do programmers often confuse Halloween and Christmas? - Because 31 Oct = 25 Dec. Business Myths of the Geek #4 'What you think matters.'
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I really don't understand where all this goes with Adobe PDF, but I always hated that format. I needed to code something for PDF format 2 years ago and saw that its internal organization is really crappy, and seems like out of the line at least. I mean it is a document format code, not a rockect science. It even takes like 5-6 secs at least to open the pdf book, for crying out loud. But even then, I have to download 1.6 Gb Adobe Acrobat Reader to work with it! It is 1.6 Gb!!! I downloaded and installed the whole MS Office 2010, and the whole package is like 600 Mb or so. Why does the whole world uses the format that just sucks? I just hope XPS or any other open standard format take over and really send this crap to history.
Sarajevo, Bosnia
mirano wrote:
and saw that its internal organization is really crappy, and seems like out of the line at least.
I've dealt with PDFs in C as well, personally while I do not like Adobe Reader all too much, I don't think PDFs are nearly as bad as you're making them. And, before you completely dismiss the PDF format you should be aware some of the design considerations are done for performance reasons. Adobe Reader is not PDF and vice-versa, and Adobe Reader is no reason to get all worked up over anyway.
Jeremy Falcon
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I really don't understand where all this goes with Adobe PDF, but I always hated that format. I needed to code something for PDF format 2 years ago and saw that its internal organization is really crappy, and seems like out of the line at least. I mean it is a document format code, not a rockect science. It even takes like 5-6 secs at least to open the pdf book, for crying out loud. But even then, I have to download 1.6 Gb Adobe Acrobat Reader to work with it! It is 1.6 Gb!!! I downloaded and installed the whole MS Office 2010, and the whole package is like 600 Mb or so. Why does the whole world uses the format that just sucks? I just hope XPS or any other open standard format take over and really send this crap to history.
Sarajevo, Bosnia
Just about a week back I have shared a similar thought about Adobe PDF over here: http://lavanyadeepak.blogspot.com/2010/06/it-is-time-adobe-reviews-their-quality.html[^] Seriously, if Adobe does not consider reviewing its quality it is time that they search for good locks for their doors.
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Not disagreeing with what you've said about PDF or Adobe, but since PDFs are standard and almost everyone uses them, we have to deal with them; but you don't have to use Adobe. Alternative PDF readers Nitro[^] FoxIt[^] Sumatra PDF[^] I've tried them all, they all work just fine.
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I really don't understand where all this goes with Adobe PDF, but I always hated that format. I needed to code something for PDF format 2 years ago and saw that its internal organization is really crappy, and seems like out of the line at least. I mean it is a document format code, not a rockect science. It even takes like 5-6 secs at least to open the pdf book, for crying out loud. But even then, I have to download 1.6 Gb Adobe Acrobat Reader to work with it! It is 1.6 Gb!!! I downloaded and installed the whole MS Office 2010, and the whole package is like 600 Mb or so. Why does the whole world uses the format that just sucks? I just hope XPS or any other open standard format take over and really send this crap to history.
Sarajevo, Bosnia
Here's something you should try: 1. Buy the full version of Adobe acrobat (around 300 euros). 2. Install it (if you have enough disc space). 3. Hunt down and disable all the "call home" cr@p (they are the sneakiest b@st@rds in the world, when it comes to that -- log in as admin, and take a second look at the registry entries) 4. Double-click the icon to open Acrobat. 5. Go for a coffee, while it opens. 6. Make that two coffees. 7. Maybe a doughnut. 8. Look at the stunningly beautiful and intuitive user interface of the program. 9. Click "File". 10. Click "New". The utter uselessness of Acrobat never fails to amaze me.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Do you work for Apple?
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." Red Adair. nils illegitimus carborundum me, me, me
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I am not sure where you downloaded Acrobat Reader from but Acrobat Reader 9.3 is just 26.1MB. Also the slow loading is not because PDF is a crappy format but because Adobe Reader loads too many plugin and tried to extract information from the document. -Saurabh
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mirano wrote:
and saw that its internal organization is really crappy, and seems like out of the line at least.
I've dealt with PDFs in C as well, personally while I do not like Adobe Reader all too much, I don't think PDFs are nearly as bad as you're making them. And, before you completely dismiss the PDF format you should be aware some of the design considerations are done for performance reasons. Adobe Reader is not PDF and vice-versa, and Adobe Reader is no reason to get all worked up over anyway.
Jeremy Falcon
Good point, Jeremy. Now what I don't understand is that since this format is nothing special and it is closed, when it comes to code, why shouldn't we use some of the open source solutions based on the standards, such as XPS, DejaVu....there are numbers of them. We are only talking about simple plain documents here, right? I believe this was one of those marketing issues, they just took the market and everybody have it now and it would be easy to ditch this in favour for something else, even if it's better.
Sarajevo, Bosnia
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Here's something you should try: 1. Buy the full version of Adobe acrobat (around 300 euros). 2. Install it (if you have enough disc space). 3. Hunt down and disable all the "call home" cr@p (they are the sneakiest b@st@rds in the world, when it comes to that -- log in as admin, and take a second look at the registry entries) 4. Double-click the icon to open Acrobat. 5. Go for a coffee, while it opens. 6. Make that two coffees. 7. Maybe a doughnut. 8. Look at the stunningly beautiful and intuitive user interface of the program. 9. Click "File". 10. Click "New". The utter uselessness of Acrobat never fails to amaze me.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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mirano wrote:
1.6 Gb Adobe Acrobat Reader
Are you sure you didn't just torrent Adobe Acrobat?
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One can hate Adobe and hate Apple, trust me. Adobe takes bloat to levels MS can only dream of. All those PDF readers that were linked below are better than the version made by the people that should know the standard the best. That is a sad state.
If I have accidentally said something witty, smart, or correct, it is purely by mistake and I apologize for it.
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Are you having a bad day?
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I did not post this when I was going berserk about pdf (that happened 2 years ago while I was actually working on it), but this time I have layed out a few simple arguments in support of my position. So please feel free to discuss it, if you wish, my state of mood certainly not being the objective of this discussion. Thank you.
Sarajevo, Bosnia
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Why would I do that? Acrobat Reader is only for reading PDF files? Am I missing something? -Saurabh
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Good point, Jeremy. Now what I don't understand is that since this format is nothing special and it is closed, when it comes to code, why shouldn't we use some of the open source solutions based on the standards, such as XPS, DejaVu....there are numbers of them. We are only talking about simple plain documents here, right? I believe this was one of those marketing issues, they just took the market and everybody have it now and it would be easy to ditch this in favour for something else, even if it's better.
Sarajevo, Bosnia
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Why would I do that when I'm happy with the small, fast and efficient Foxit and SumatraPDF?