Total fabrication

Comments

• lime@feddit.nu ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  pdf is a print and typesetting format for printers. what’s crazy is that we’re using it for something other than that.

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  • floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    It’s not? The p stands for portable, which implies a digital format for software use. Maybe you’re thinking of postscript?

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    • lime@feddit.nu ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      pdf is a postscript container format, yes.

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  • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip ⁨47⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

    History of PDF is basically: We need a standard format to get print jobs over there > Postscript > let’s add feature X > also feature y > make it do thing too! > uh oh, it’s gotten too powerful, security galore > reboot and slim it down > PDF > let’s add feature X > also feature y > …

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• dan@upvote.au ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Strangely, this kinda makes sense. PDF is based on PostScript, which is the file type that gets sent to printers. It’s just skipping the final “send to printer” part and sends it to a file instead.

  A fascinating thing (in a scary way) is that PostScript is technically a Turing-complete programming language. When a document is printed using PostScript, your computer generates a script that the printer runs in order to produce the document.

  PDF is essentially “the safe parts” of PostScript, with all the dynamic parts removed. PDFs are statically laid out when they’re created, rather than having to run arbitrary code to lay them out like PostScript does.

  For printing, PCL has somewhat taken over, and it’s less scary (it just has preset commands rather than allowing arbitrary code in a full programming language with loops, functions, logic, etc), but PostScript is still used today for higher-end printers and print jobs.

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  • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip ⁨57⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

    A fascinating thing (in a scary way) is that PostScript is technically a full programming language with loops, functions, logic, and a built-in font rendering and 2D graphics engine.

    It also had a extension to create NextStep UI with it.

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    • cruseo@piefed.world ⁨45⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

      This is how the nextstep UI was so smooth and sharp and so well built for design, especially output to print. And how that translated to macOS (although the graphics display subsystem and macOS is based on PDF, not postscript). It’s also part of the entire print sub systems, and how it was always so easy to create a PDF in the manner the OP suggests. That functionality was really only added to other operating systems later with plugins.

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  • beanson@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

    I’ve seen some pretty feature rich PDFs - before WebGIS got really good, people would often disseminate digital maps and geographic reports via GeospatialPDF which is an extension for PDF. You can do all kinds of stuff in there related to measuring distances, coordinate transformations and zoom/pan around the maps. Some of these files would end up being >500MB. Probably still used quite a lot field work I imagine.

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• dragnucs@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Because you are using the wrong tool. Libreoffice has a dedicated export to PDF button. Other tools do too.

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  • Johanno@feddit.org ⁨51⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

    Phones are shitty for that.

    Some apps can’t save to a folder on your phone.

    So you have to share it with an app but the file manager doesn’t support that.

    So you share it with the printing app and then you print the pdf to your phone…

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  • e8CArkcAuLE@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    so do Adobe Illustrator and many CAD tools

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    • dragnucs@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Is OP still using winrar and notepad++?

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• aeronmelon@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  All modern printers save documents as a multi-paged image (read: a PDF) in their memory before printing it onto paper. It’s trivial to make the print dialog save a PDF file because you’re telling it to give the file it just made back to the computer instead of giving it to the printer.

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• Ghoelian@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I mean why would you build some PDF export stuff when this basic functionality is already available in most browsers.

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  • lepinkainen@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    So if a native application doesn’t support PDF exports, I should open it in a browser?

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    • Ghoelian@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

      No, a native (Windows at least) application with print support also has the ability to print to PDF just like the browser does.

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• LodeMike@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I think this is more of an expression of more people printing (and it being prominent in the UI than anything else).

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