robert engels wrote: > The MOST Important issue (coincidentally that you did not address) is > that the PDF specification is controlled by Adobe. I don't think it > takes a crystal ball to figure out why. It is so Adobe can continually > "change" the specification in the name of innovation, in order to render > other people's tools at least temporarily obsolete.
I think you are overestimating the end user. When I demonstrate my examples, I often see people who are still using Acrobat Reader 5 or even earlier on their computer. It's not because Adobe introduces a new feature that all viewer that support this feature suddenly becomes obsolete. > I would argue that 99% of the pdfs in existence use 10% of the > specification. PDF Reader has become bloat-ware because the > specification is bloated. Take for instance transparency; a lot of viewers can't handle transparency because it's rather complex. Do you think that is a good reason to say: transparency shouldn't be in the specs? > We ship a PDF viewer that handles most of the > important parts of the PDF specification in a 200k jar file. Adobe > Reader is 80mb and then some??? Adobe Reader is the most complete PDF viewer, and that comes with a price: it's slower, it needs more memory, and there's the size you already mentioned. That's good news for people that want to offer an alternative viewer that is able to render 99% of the PDFs in existence. If Adobe shipped a 'light' version of reader, there would be no place in the market for Foxit, Ghost view, and so on... > I just think if you look at ALL of the interactive features, there are > probably far better ways to handle them (even via flash 'applets'). Not all of them. This discussion started with OCG. That's really interesting functionality. > If you are trying to develop "software" in PDF, or using PDF as > a delivery model, I think there are probably far better methods. The one doesn't necessarily exclude the other. > i think it is just a shame that Adobe is trying to make it all things to > all people. Anyone remember the Simpsons episode where Homer designed > the car? Granted, you don't have to use all of the specification... I even have that episode on DVD ;-) You're right that PDF has some features that are really exotic, and that are probably hardly ever used. As Leonard already pointed out even Adobe Reader doesn't support everything that is in the PDF specs. But are you sure this could be avoided if the specs were to be opened up? I'm sure you have already heard the expression: "A camel is a horse designed by a committee." ;-) Bruno ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ iText-questions mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/itext-questions Buy the iText book: http://itext.ugent.be/itext-in-action/
