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Uh, PDF is "crackable" because there is a very detailed published specification. You can download yourself a copy from this site. The latest version is here. Adobe owns the trademark, meaning that nobody can call something that deviates from Adobe's spec PDF, but its just as open as the Open Document format. There are no secrets about PDF (though it does take some work to grok the complex 1200 page spec) and no license or royalties are necessary to use it. Prendergast's claim that PDF is not open is nonsense. It is open in all ways that are important.

Microsoft Word format is both proprietary and an actual secret. There isn't a published spec. Furthermore, it is very complicated and changes frequently. We know that it is "crackable" because people have successfully reverse engineered it sufficiently to make MS Word documents readable in programs such as OpenOffice.org Writer, but the fact that talented reverse engineers can't get it quite right shows that it isn't easy.

Uh, PDF is "crackable" because there is a very detailed published specification. You can download yourself a copy from this site. The latest version is here. Adobe owns the trademark, meaning that nobody can call something that deviates from Adobe's spec PDF, but its just as open as the Open Document format. There are no secrets about PDF (though it does take some work to grok the complex 1200 page spec) and no license or royalties are necessary to use it. Prendergast's claim that PDF is not open is nonsense. It is open in all ways that are important.

Microsoft Word format is both proprietary and an actual secret. There isn't a published spec. Furthermore, it is very complicated and changes frequently. We know that it is "crackable" because people have successfully reverse engineered it sufficiently to make MS Word documents readable in programs such as OpenOffice.org Writer, but the fact that talented reverse engineers can't get it quite right shows that it isn't easy.

Many are happy using PDF files because PDF files have seldom let us down.

PDF is a closed format but has a freely available reader. How is this different than using a freely available MS Reader?

I'm always curious when someone makes a blanket statement like, "don't get it done." Can you give a specific example of a document you need MS Office for? Just wondering because I managed to make it through a Bachelor's degree, half a Master's degree, and 10 years of professional technical document creation (including a 107 page government document this last week) without ever needing MS Office. Not that I have never used MS Office, just that I haven't ever needed or wanted to use any feature that isn't available in an open source application. I'm not trying to be argumentative here; I honestly can't think of an example.

Personally I prefer LaTeX and send pdf files. That works ok till I am working alone. But if we have to work and interact, keeping track of changes is not the easiest thing to do in LaTeX.

Keeping track of changes is as easy as RCS/Subversion/version control system of choice (I've even used Visual SourceSafe when I was in an MS shop). Sharing changes can be done easily enough via PDF annotations, or LaTeXdiff depending on what tools you have available.

LaTeX also offers possiblities that simply aren't available in word processors like MS Word and OO.o Writer. Using packages like xcomment it is possible to write a single document that is both a paper report and slide presentation - just change the document class and recompile. I've written document classes such that I have a couple of extra environments available: \begin{summary} and \begin{shared}. Anything in a summary environment is included in the presentation, but not in the report, and anything in shared is in both report and presentation. Anything not in either environment is left out of the presentation. With that done it is easy enough to start writing your report, adding a little set of bullet points summarising each paragraph in a summary environment as you go (and sharing any equations and diagrams as needed) and once you're done you've got your presentation complete as well as your report. You've also go the whole package encapsulated in a single file: any changes are easy to propogate from report to presentation of vice-versa, and maintenance is far easier. Try that with your standard office suite.

Jedidiah.

Here's the The Adobe PDF reference, for if you want to implement applications that use PDF. In particular, you might want to read Section 1.5 of the PDF Reference, "Intellectual Property". In summary, it says that they'll enforce their copyright on the PDF specification in order to keep the standard accurate, but grant you the right to implement the standard pretty much however you like.

Some apps that do so, without licensing the Adobe PDf libraries or tools, include:

GhostScript
OpenOffice.org
Scribus
Mac OS X
(specifically the window system, print system, and Preview tool) ... and *LOTS* more, including evince, xpdf, kpdf, libpoppler, and other open source PDF viewing tools/libs, several reporting libraries like ReportLab, etc.

My apologies for the swear word. Rough weekend.

pdftex's character protrusion feature is a lot more robust and flexible than using active characters, have you read Thanh's thesis? Also, if you spec dimens in sps you never have to use \pnt

I'm never satisfied about my work until bluelines or some other film-based proof shows up. proofing on a laser is neat, but only an approximation of the final product.

XeTeX is an excellent example of what TeX can do. Will Robertson's fontspec package (http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/xetex/late x/fontspec/) provides a nice interface to both OpenType and Apple Advanced Typography font capabilities --- it's the latter which I'm taking advantage of in my design, a font with an optical axis and two design axes. Darned shame Adobe let Multiple Master font whither. After that I do have plans for a METAFONT which I'm hoping will push the envelope on what can be done with MF.

MF vs. OT? Garamond Premier Pro has four sizes: Caption, Normal, Subhead and Display (and this seems to be all Adobe plans to do these days, see http://store.adobe.com/type/topics/opticalsize.htm l); Computer Modern has eight sizes (5,6,7,8,9,10,12,17). The typeface revival I'm working on had 15 sizes in hot metal, plus a lithographed poster (which has provided interesting insights into the design).

Sure, I could have 15 different named fonts, but even when setting style sheets it's tedious to change the size twice, and it makes for ungainly font menus. That also fails to address the two style axes (and if things continue to go well I'll probably do a weight axis --- the foundry did a demi-bold)

William

"Since when is PDF an open standard?" Since 1993, that's when.

You can download the specification:
http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/pdf/ind ex_reference.html

or buy it on paper:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0321 304748/

Vaguely Secret Compartment
* ballpoint pen: "Be a part of a usability study! http://www.adobe.com/usability

Laptop compartment:
* Heating assembly for fancy soldering iron (wire tangled w/ Sony wraparound headphones & phone wire)
* Wiring Simplified, New 31st Edition (1975 Code!)
* Sony Clie
* Smelly wallet, containing:

      1. Washington ID Card
      2. Seattle Central Community College Student ID
      3. Metro GoPass (expired)
      4. Zig-Zag Kutcorners
      5. Social Security Card
      6. Household Bank Gold (account closed)
      7. Business card for job I should pursue
      8. Ticket stub for Star Wars Episode III, 5/19/05, East Valley 13 Cinem customer copy
      9. Oseao business card
    10. Fitness club membership card I found while riding my bike on Capitol Hill
    11. Garfield Student ID card I found after getting off the bus
    12. Food Handler card (expires 2007)
    13. Receipt from Check Masters - Capitol Hill (last paycheck from That's Amore)

* Sony DCR-TRV27 Handycam (case cracked)
* cannister of Butane
* Flex Scraper

Middle compartment:
* Multimeter
* Sunglasses
* Crescent wrench
* Monkey wrench
* Lineman's pliers
* wire strippers
* saw
* level
* tile cutters
* butane-powered soldering iron
* phone
* my favorite screwdriver

Various zippery pockets
* Tiff's digicam
* red-insulated alligator clip
* miniDV tape label: MOTTMAID

more shit here

Specifically, here:
http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/pdf/ind ex_reference.html

Giving up one proprietary format for another is stupid - the end of this will be lots of licences bought in Adobe Acrobat software, with little or no effect for open source.

Just because PDF can be read by virtually everyone, it is not an "open" file format. In fact, PDF is "protected" by several patents and some options are a well-kept secret of Adobe.

While you are correct that Adobe controls the PDF spec and it is not open in that sense, it is free as in beer, and anybody can use/implement the specification without Adobe's permission. They give their explicit permission to do so in the PDF references: http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/pdf/ind ex_reference.html

As for some options being "well-kept secrets", please clarify what you're talking about, as the PDF spec is offical, given out by Adobe themselves, and pretty damned comprehensive.

The OpenOffice format is definitely open source, so I assume you were not referring to it in any way.

Looks open to me. See Foxit, xpdf, ghostscript, KOffice, and others for examples of 3rd party applications which can read them. MANY more can write to it too.

Well, the format specification is here. If you don't like their implementation then write your own. There are no license constraints on the format - you are free to do whatever you want with the specification.

At least the file format has been publicly released:
http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/acrobat /sdk/index.html And you can use it reliably on more than just devices that can handle office formats.
http://linux.softpedia.com/get/Utilities/Xpdf-4153 .shtml

PDF

and

Open Office XML

Strangely, both say you need Adobe reader to read them ;)

Acrobat 7.0 Professional will allow you to edit PDF files. You can also create fillable form fields, checkboxes, etc. in existing PDFs.

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatpro/tryout.ht ml

"Macromedia: Get over yourself. You're good, but not that good."

I'm hoping Adobe changes Macromedia's backward personality, too. Of course, Macromedia must be really bad if Bruce Chizen can fix the company. (Mr. Chizen looks more than a little crazy in that official photo, as though he were a fox assuring chickens of their safety.)

Mr. Chizen is the CEO who bought Adobe millions of dollars in bad publicity with the handling of the Skylarov situation. For example:

"Bruce Chizen -- President, Director, CEO Adobe
John Warnock -- Co-Chairman Adobe
Charles Geschke -- Co-Chairman Adobe

"... These are the individuals that could have had Dmitry home last July. Instead they thought it would be fun to play with Dmitry, Adobe's reputation, and the money of Adobe's stockholders. ... If there were justice in America, these such persons would be spending Christmas in a cardboard box under the freeway overpass."

Mr. Chizen also headed another effort to get bad publicity for Adobe: Dealing with the originator of Killustrator in a socially inept way.

Mr. Chizen followed that with a socially backward way of dealing with Chinese piracy. Adobe may ditch China sales. This time, someone else at Adobe tried to mend the damage by saying Mr. Chizen was wrong.

Thanks to a miracle of modern science called the Flashblock extension, Flash embedded in a web page appears as a sylized F in Firefox. A welcome relief since almost everything done in Flash is a childish demand for undeserved attention.

--
Trying to make one book explain all of life makes some people crazy enough to kill.

Once you have the Adobe SVG viewer it should work just fine with Internet Explorer.

On the other hand, SVG is included in the development Firefox version and should be available in the next major release (1.5 ? i think they're skipping 1.1-1.4 ). More info at this FAQ.

Anyway, it's very funny how Adobe is into this SVG hype at adobe.com/svg for a long time now, and Adobe and Macromedia are basically the same company.

Maybe the whole thing is intended to promote SVG, I mean this comes from (pretty much) the same guys that are giving that EULA:

Or you can upgrade to Adobe Reader 7.0, which loads plug-ins only as they're needed. For me it loads about 5 times faster than the old Reader versions (5, and especially 6).

Here. Section 8.6 Interactive Forms, from page 634. Of course, it's a PDF, so you need to use Acrobat Reader as a bootstrap to actually read the document before you implement your own reader (or you can buy a printed copy).

What is this new technology

SVG? New? Not that is news! SVG 1.1 was ratified on the 14th of January, 2003. Most SVG users either view the files in the Adobe Plugin, or translate to raster images for vector charting and the like. (I actually had a pretty cool 3D pie chart program for awhile there. SVG came out of one end, translated by Batik, then viewed as a PNG.)

why should I care about it

You shouldn't. It's just technology marching on. If you need to do vector graphics, you'll find it far more up-to-date and better supported than PostScript. If you don't need to do Vector graphics (or don't even know what vector graphics ARE) then you definitely don't care.

As a computer expert of 20 years and programmer of 15 years, how will this effect me?

You'll need a new bullet-point on your resume in a few years?

Will I have to learn totally new things, or does it build on the old ones?

You know XML? You know PostScript? How about ECMAScript? Yes? You're good to go then.

Who owns the patents to this new technology?

It's older than the hills technology. I dunno, maybe my great grandmother had a patent at some point, but there are none now. (Unless someone invents a stupid one like "Method for storing Vector graphics in XML." Hmm... maybe it is patented.)

Will Microsoft release their own version of it and crush everyone?

Microsoft Internet Explorer (Exploder in my book) needs the Adobe plugin. AFAIK, Microsoft is mostly ignoring it.

You can download it from here. They have it in RPM and tarball form.

I long for the days when I used Framemaker. It's style system is much easier to use the Words, and makes it much easier to enforce standard formatting. And MIF output was great for Perl transformations.

• Sun's Java JRE's license specifies that redistribution of this software is only allowed if it is "bundled as part of, and for the sole purpose of running, your Programs". Making a copy of the JRE as part of an entire copy of a GNU/Linux distribution seems to serve a different purpose.
• Acrobat Reader's license allows you to redistribute the software but requires you to keep no copies: "You may not, rent, lease, sublicense, assign or transfer your rights in the Software, or authorize all or any portion of the Software to be copied onto another user's computer except as may be expressly permitted herein. You may, however, transfer all your rights to Use the Software to another person or legal entity provided that: [...] (b) you retain no copies, including backups and copies stored on a computer [...]".

The so called "Blue book" and "Green Book" :
http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/ps/sdk/ sample/index_psbooks.html

Also "Thinking in PostScript" :
http://www.rightbrain.com/download/books/ThinkingI nPostScript.pdf

Linux (the community) NEEDS commercial software. But if it wants to attract it, it needs to be in a position to spark another Shareware revolution like the one seen after Windows 95. Make it easy for users to use their system. Make it so they can visit VersionTracker or Tucows and try everything under the sun! Give the users back control of their computers! Viva la Software!

There is commercial software for Linux, maybe not a specific app from a specific company but then more than likely an equivilent one cn be found. Database? Check. Wordprocessing, check. Spreadsheet, check... The one app that doesn't have an equivilent package for Linux that I know of is Photoshop. There's GIMP but it doesn't have all the capabilities of PH. But I wouldn't be supprized if Adobe is working on one as they are supporting Linux for some things, Adobe Extends Linux Support for Intelligent Document Platform with Adobe Reader 7.0

It would be nice if they supported SVG. Sure its not native in most browsers yet, but its on its way and in the meantime there is Adobe's SVG plugin. Opera has support, Firefox should have it by 1.5 and KHTML has it in the works.

SVG is a W3C approved standard. Adobe has more marketing oriented description of the technology.

Other than Microsoft is anyone else using VML?

It would be nice if they supported SVG. Sure its not native in most browsers yet, but its on its way and in the meantime there is Adobe's SVG plugin. Opera has support, Firefox should have it by 1.5 and KHTML has it in the works.

SVG is a W3C approved standard. Adobe has more marketing oriented description of the technology.

Other than Microsoft is anyone else using VML?

Only if you've got Adobe Type Manager (ATM) installed

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Macs with even higher price tags that suck at integer operations.

... aren't that standard. Look at the effort that it takes to get Java ported to somewhere. Kaffe is/has been ready for years. Classpath (your standard library) is only getting useful (it compiles Eclipse!) And how many "deprecated" components are there in Java? C++ has plenty of people working on less-than-set-in-stone projects, but those shouldn't be considered standard. Use gktmm by all means. Use Qt. Use ACE. None of them can be considered standard, but you can use them today and Get Shit Done (TM). Hell, even Boost isn't standard. The day anything turns standard in C++ is the day that niche is basically done (on the scale short of introsort pushing out quicksort). GUI programming is by no means a done deal yet; the Adobe people are working up some very interesting tools; Mozart is investigating along similar lines; there's also a smaller personal project that uses embedded DSL in C++ (Boost.Spirit style). Until the One-True-Abstraction blows everything else away, you get the choice of making your own bed and lying in it.

On thefacebook.com, "visualize my friends" creates an svg file that shows all the connections between your friends, and Safari displays it just fine.

If you have the Adobe SVG plugin it does. But not by itself. Try ctrl-clicking on the SVG graphic and select "About SVG viewer", voilá!

Apple adding native support would mean that there would be a userbase with SVG support by default, as with good PNG transparency support and CSS text shadows where Apple has paved the way.

Seems like these days you just can't ask people to download appropriate plugins anymore. Oh how I miss the roarin' nineties...

I am reasonably certain you can already do this in with Acrobat with the addition of a small cgi script. Look here, scroll down to where it talks about the "FDF toolkit" API.

In order to do this of course you must write your own cgi frontend, so you could say this isn't as much as Office would hypothetically give you. However all Office would be hypothetically giving you here is a prepared drop-in CGI script, and I'm relatively certain were there need for such a thing there would be several free prepared drop-in CGI scripts for doing this with Acrobat already; and certainly it would likely be quicker and cheaper for any organization with access to at least one programmer to write such a thing internally than to wait for, then upgrade to, a new version of MS-Office.

I would imagine however that no one would ever really bother with such a thing, however, since, well, pretty much everyone in the world except Microsoft considers a PDF viewer a necessary part of a modern desktop system and web browser, so few people would particularly think of "requires PDF support" as "requiring plugin"...

It's open.

http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/pdf/ind ex_reference.html

But word processing documents are another matter entirely. People care about the size and position of any item on a page. It really needs to be very exact from implementation to implementation.

I would have no problem whatsoever if Opera eventually disappeared, but don't worry. Opera has all kinds of things going on. For example, Adobe is using the Opera rendering engine for its HTML preview in GoLive CS2 (which means that the WYSIWYG aspect of it really IS WYG). This, and other strategic deals, will help them in the long run.

I haven't seen anyone mention this one yet, but I have used GoLive on MacOS and MacOS X for several years with good luck.

http://www.adobe.com/products/golive/main.html

Adobe is proposing a digital negative format: http://www.adobe.com/products/dng/main.html

Now photo finishers can do the same thing they've always done: if you have the negative, you are authorized.

I alway shoot in Raw (NEF) which can be converted to DNG. My only concerns is that since there is no encryption on DNG files, can you prevent people from turning JPGs into DNG files?

Adobe retaliated by dropping Photoshop, Illustrator, GoLive, and InDesign for the Macintosh!

So what brought the Macintosh versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, GoLive, and InDesign back?

Adobe retaliated by dropping Photoshop, Illustrator, GoLive, and InDesign for the Macintosh!

So what brought the Macintosh versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, GoLive, and InDesign back?

Adobe retaliated by dropping Photoshop, Illustrator, GoLive, and InDesign for the Macintosh!

So what brought the Macintosh versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, GoLive, and InDesign back?

Adobe retaliated by dropping Photoshop, Illustrator, GoLive, and InDesign for the Macintosh!

So what brought the Macintosh versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, GoLive, and InDesign back?

A thousand bucks for Office and Photoshop? Really? Since you've got PS 5.5 you can jump right up to CS2 for 150 dollars. Right here on Adobe's site. For Office, you can upgrade from the 98 version to 2004 for $240, or if you're a student/teacher/have a student, you can get it for $150. Details here. Nowhere near a thousand dollars. Smart shopping, it's a miraculous idea. Or there's always piracy.

Corel offer a complete graphics suite with a no strings attached fully featured time limited download of CGS 12, which includes vector drawing (Draw), Trace, a font tool, and Photo-Paint.

Photo-Paint, if it is the first product of its type you have used, is extensive and intuitive. It only takes a modicum of effort to adopt to it if you are a long term Photoshop user.

Personally, nothing is likely to shift me from my Creative Suite 2, but please remember that Corel offer a respectable alternative to Photoshop for the price of two programs that form the Creative Suite.

Lest it also be forgotten, for what is relatively speaking a budget price there is the great PaintShop Pro 9. You can do everything with that which you'd ask of an image mangling program, for a fraction of the Adobe cost.

I find everything about the GIMP counter-intuitive. I started using it back in the day, and it's great that it's free as in beer, so it makes the list too because it is full featured, it does properly support layers, vectors, rasterisation, efficient use of swap, no brainer to set up, and tutorials aplenty online once you've graduated past the Grokking The GIMP stage.

I haven't used the Microsoft program and don't care to. The only way this product would be more "real competition" to Photoshop is the financial backing that is behind it, and the avenues of distribution available to it if it could be bundled pre-installed for an extra fee. Microsoft is arriving very late to the game with this, but if it increases innovation which gives users like me more toys like CS2's Vanishing Point, Warp filter and others, then that's good.

If it's a shallow imitation of something I have a lot of familiarity with, which I can get from a bona fide graphics design company which has not let me down in the past, and who provide OSS for scripting new parts to the program, there's no reason to consider switching. I'm presuming JASC's PSP 9 is going to beat it on price anyway, Corel is going to beat it on value, and Adobe will beat it for quality and extendability.

My $0.02.

I'm sure that someone's already pointed this out , but Adobe announced their intent to purchase MM back in April - http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/adobe andmacromedia.html

By contrast, the limitations of using Quark XPress and InDesign are available manpower/time and computer equipment. One can do anything, but not much can be automated ``merely'' using stylesheets and graphic placement rules.

I don't know about QuarkXPress, but InDesign has a very detailed scripting capability built-in. You can program it in VisualBasic on Windows, AppleScript on Mac OS X, and in Java on either platform.

It's not the same as TeX, of course, but it's simply not true that InDesign has that kind of limitations on automation.

Adobe and Marcomedia are now one and the same. Sad, but true.

Adobe's DNG (Digital Negative) format seems to be to be a much better deal than OpenRaw. "Ah!", you think, "DNG is still the Man smacking us down".

Not true. Adobe's published the spec and will let anybody use it for free. My money's on Adobe swaying the camera companies to support DNG. Free for you, free for me, free for everybody and support from a company that seems to get it.

Here's more info on DNG: http://www.adobe.com/products/dng/main.html

The manufacturers are just opposed to working together to create some sort of standard.

Adobe made an open format called digital negative... The camera manufacturers need to start adopting it.

isn't there an animated SVG format that does what Flash does better?

but what tools does an artist created SVG animations? Where can I get an SVG player plugin? Adobe's SVG Viewer plugin is huge and rarely updated. And what will Adobe do with its SVG player after it finishes its acquisition of Macromedia? Will Adobe promote Flash or SVG? They have SVG, but have dropped the ball promoting it.

Firefox will supposedly support SVG eventually, but how many Joe AOLs use Firefox?