On 12/16/10 11:49, Harold Fuchs wrote:
PDF is not meant for editing. Period.
<snip>
So you are saying that after first saving my PDF document (which I made
using Acrobat) it's cast in stone and I can't edit it or send it to my
colleague (who also has Acrobat) for review/edit. Not sure about that ...
No, I'm saying PDF was not /designed/ to be edited. The fact that one can
edit a PDF is to be taken as an unintended feature.
Why bother to write the Acrobat software if PDF is not *designed* to be
edited? Under your assumption a "pseudo printer" would be all that was
necessary.
PDF was never designed to be an editable format.
From the ISO PDF abstract (yes, PDF is much older than this ISO document, but
the definition of what a PDF is, is pretty much the same now as it was almost 20
years ago) http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=51502 :
ISO 32000-1:2008 specifies a digital form for representing electronic documents
to enable users to exchange and view electronic documents independent of the
environment in which they were created or the environment in which they are
viewed or printed.
PDF has always been about being able to exchange, view and print documents
regardless of the original software used to _create_ the PDF.
Yes you "can" edit PDFs directly using various applications such as Inkscape or
Adobe Acrobat, but in reality, PDF is simply a delivery format that can be read
and printed (unless printing is restricted) on any current OS. It is a delivery
format that ensures that the end user can view the document if they do not have
access to the original document and original software used to create the PDF.
In effect PDF is a digital printout of a document.
C.
--
Clayton Cornell [email protected]
OpenOffice.org Documentation Project co-lead
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected]
For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
