Adobe To Release Full PDF Specification to ISO

nickull writes "Adobe announced it will release the entire PDF specification (current version 1.7 ) to the International Standards Organization (ISO) via AIIM. PDF has reached a point in its maturity cycle where maintaining it in an open standards manner is the next logical step in evolution. Not only does this reinforce Adobe's commitment to open standards (see also my earlier blog on the release of flash runtime code to the Tamarin open source project at Sourceforge), but it demonstrates that open standards and open source strategies are really becoming a mainstream concept in the software industry. So what does this really mean? Most people know that PDF is already a standard so why do this now? This event is very subtle yet very significant. PDF will go from being an open standard/specification and de facto standard to a full blown de jure standard. The difference will not affect implementers much given PDF has been a published open standard for years. There are some important distinctions however. First — others will have a clearly documented process for contributing to the future of the PDF specification. That process also clearly documents the path for others to contribute their own Intellectual property for consideration in future versions of the standard. Perhaps Adobe could have set up some open standards process within the company but this would be merely duplicating the open standards process, which we felt was the proper home for PDF. Second, it helps cement the full PDF specification as the umbrella specification for all the other PDF standards under the ISO umbrella such as PDF/A, PDF/X and PDF/E. The move also helps realize the dreams of a fully open web as the web evolves (what some are calling Web 2.0), built upon truly open standards, technologies and protocols."

Comments

ISO approved PDF

[Xymor]

Is this a nail in the MS XML coffin?

Re:ISO approved PDF

[vhogemann]

Blame AcrobatViewer, not PDF.

Evince is fast and snappy here on my old and busted PIII 700Mhz, with only 128MB RAM.

Re:ISO approved PDF

[Zadaz]

Acrobat reader is widely known to be a resource hog, but banning PDFs is short sighted and reactionary. It's like banning shoes because you tripped once.

Foxit. Windows and (now) Linux. Takes about 1/2 a second to open.

If you have a Mac, you have a slick one built in.

Re:ISO approved PDF

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Is this a nail in the MS XML coffin?

First, hopefully you were referring to XPS (XML Paper Specification) and not OpenXML, which many of the replies seem to assume. I don't see this as a counter move actually, but rather as business as usual. PDF has been an open standard for a long time and I don't know that any real player has any trouble getting Adobe to add to the spec. I'm glad they've formalized the process and renewed their commitment to keeping PDF an open standard.

I also don't see that PDF has much of a chance in the battle against XPS. Unless Microsoft is forbidden from bundling readers and writers with Windows, it will take over most of the market via that monopoly leveraging. By the time the courts act I suspect the market will already be destroyed and everyone will be locked into one set of tools made by MS. The courts will eventually rule against MS, and Adobe will get some money, but the market will never be repaired and consumers will be stuck with a PDF replacement where they can only get tools from one vendor and those tools will never be improved again.

I could be wrong. The courts could be faster than molasses or the industry as a whole could see the trap coming and stick with PDF despite MS. I don't suspect that will be the case though. The most realistic hopeful scenario would be Linux adoption by corporations and government taking off for managed desktops and OS X taking off in the home market sufficiently that the Windows monopoly is weakened enough so that MS cannot effectively manage a takeover based on their monopoly alone.

Re:ISO approved PDF

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Even the most verbose XML couldn't come close to the unbelievable bloat that is .PDF.

The PDF standard does not seem particularly bloated to me.

I got sick of PDF's taking forever to loading, and the reader hanging constantly on our PC's at work, so I banned them from from the office. It shouldn't take a bleeding edge machine to open plain old documents in a reasonable amount of time.

Ignorance is one of the main reasons why open standards lose to MS proprietary ones in the market. The average person does not understand the advantages. One of the main advantages is that no one is locked into a single vendor for their tools. Despite this almost everyone uses the combination of Window+IE+Adobe Acrobat Reader Plug-in. This is a terrible toolset and is bloated, slow, and poorly designed. Windows can't multi-task memory resources if your life depended upon it. IE itself is bloated and poorly handles threading plug-ins and will hang the whole process until a download is complete. The acrobat plug-in is slow and bloated with all the default settings turned on. The end result is an average user with an average machine clicking on a PDF link and their whole machine grinding to a halt while it waits for the download to finish, then they get to wait yet longer while the Acrobat plug-in eventually gets around to its main purpose.

The solution is, quite simply, don't use that combination of tools. If you're on Windows there are plenty of great, free PDF readers. Foxit is my favorite. On Linux I like XPDF and on OS X I like Preview. You have choices because PDF is an open standard. Blaming a standard for the failings of a given tool is just plain incorrect.

Now I imagine you won't care what I say anyway and will be quite happy when Microsoft's bundled XPS format takes over the market. It will even render faster for you for some time, since the default tools will be built into the OS's display APIs. You'll probably be happy about this for years until you realize you can't move to another platform because all your files are trapped in one only MS's reader will open. Moreover, you'll probably be wondering why you need a top end machine 5 years from now to open files you used to be able to open on your old machine, but since there will only be one reader available you'll be stuck with that. And if they start adding DRM as a mandatory feature on XPS files, so that you have to register all the documents you create with MS, well what can you do? Sure you'll complain about these things, but what will you do? Everyone uses XPS and if you ever want to submit a resume you need to have Windows with its built-in XPS tools.

...or maybe you won't. Maybe you and the rest of the industry will wise up to the advantages of open standards, as a few large organizations currently seem to be doing. Maybe you'll just download a good PDF viewer and think to yourself, wow I'm glad I have options and I'm not stuck with just one viewer, that would suck."

Re:ISO approved PDF

[ruzel]

IT people with your attitude drive me insane and give us all bad names. I can't imagine what kind of hoops your people have to jump through to get a stupid digital document. "Sorry, Ron, the asshole in IT won't let us use PDFs, can you send me a Word doc?" A University I was affiliated with did the same thing with regard to zip files. Zip files!!! So hundreds of scientists can't get work done because ONE jackass can't figure out how to better protect them than just outright banning a file type from email.

Find a solution to the problem. That's your job.

Re:ISO approved PDF

[Atzanteol]

I also suspect MS will release XPS readers for multiple platforms.

Like Windows 2003, Windows XP, Windows Vista, etc.?

Kudos to them

[Enderandrew]

I tip my hat to them.

I don't know that this move has more meaning today than if it was done two years ago, but I certainly see more motivation today. The purpose of the ODF is to ensure that 100 years from now we can still access data. Closed formats mean data may not be accessible in the future. PDF used to be the sole means to have a document look exactly the same across any platform. That is no longer the case, and even Microsoft has opened the standard (mostly) on their new Office data files.

While I still applaud the effort, Adobe is late to the party.

Re:Kudos to them

[c_fel]

PDF used to be the sole means to have a document look exactly the same across any platform. That is no longer the case, and even Microsoft has opened the standard (mostly) on their new Office data files.

No, I disagree. Even when open office formats, the document won't look exactly the same on one an other platform. Example : the open document format (.odt) renders somewhat differently when opened in OpenOffice for Windows and OpenOffice for Linux. And it may be completely different when opened with koffice.
The content is the same, though.

What I believe is the .pdf excels in porting the exactly same layout of a page between platforms and softwares, while Office files excel in porting the exact editable content. Their goals are simply not the same.

Re:Kudos to them

[hackstraw]

I tip my hat to them.

I do too. This is a very mature and wise decision for Adobe to make.

I know now that I was wrong, but I did not care for PDFs for years. And still to this day I have issues with people that don't do them correctly (basically those that put a bunch of huge images into a PDF container).

But with the advent of Linux and especially OS X being able to create PDFs so easily, and I can share documents with anybody and have them look like they are supposed to look is very nice.

Although I would have prefered if this was an open spec with quality PDF generators from day one, 10 years or so of progress to that ultimate goal is not bad in the long run.

This model should be _the_ standard for propriatary data formats. By that, I mean going from propriatary to an open standard if it cannot be an open standard from the beginning. Autodesk, MS, etc, I'm looking at you for adopting such a respectable decision for document formats.

Re:Kudos to them

[Directrix1]

Those are bugs in an implementation of a PDF viewer. They aren't bugs in the PDF standard.

Re:Kudos to them

[Zebra1024]

Most word processors, like Microsoft Word, are created on the WYSIWYG principle. They are designed to show you on the screen how the document will look when it is printed. This is why the printer affects how the document is rendered to the screen.

Re:Kudos to them

[drinkypoo]

Adobe PDF documents look the same on every computer, when printed as well as on the screen, why should MS word be any different? If Adobe can ignore the printer and display the document the same everywhere, and print it out the same, why can't MS word do this?

Well, one answer is that PDF can not do that. For instance if you print the same document that runs to the very edge of the page on two printers, one with a 1/4" margin and one with a 1/8" margin, you have two options. You can scale it, or not. If you scale it, the documents will be different sizes. If you do not, different amounts of the document will be unprinted (they lie in that unprintable margin area.) PDF doesn't override the physical limitations of the output device, it works within them just like every other program.

Another answer is that word is a big pile of crap.

Thanks Microsoft?

[paugq]

Translation for mere mortals: Adobe is feeling the breath of Microsoft and its Metro. They are so scared to become the next Netscape they are trying to nil any reason people may have to use Microsoft's XPS.

Flash SWF file specification not open

[NearlyHeadless]

You cannot download the Flash File Format (SWF) specification without agreeing to a license which forbids writing a flash interpreter.

http://www.adobe.com/licensing/developer/fileforma t/faq/#item-1-8:

Can I use the File Format Specification to create a SWF interpreter or player?

No, the File Format Specification is provided for the specific purpose of enabling software applications to export to the Macromedia Flash File Format (SWF).

Re:Tamarin

[SavedLinuXgeeK]

No, Tamarin is essentially getting Flash's action script engine, whichis EMCA Script 3.0 (I think), and this meaning that Firefox's javascript engine will be able to be replaced (overhauled) with the onen from Flash. The action script engine in flash is much faster and more robust than the one in Firefox currently.

"Standard du jure" [sic]?

[gblues]

1) I think you mean "du jour"
2) <IndigoMantoya>I don't think "du jour" means what you think it means.</IndigoMantoya>

"du jour" simply means "of the day" ("soup du jour" => "soup of the day"). I really don't think you intended to claim that becoming the standard of the day is a good thing. I think saying, "PDF will transition from a de facto standard to an official one" would have been clearer, more succinct, and still gotten your intended point across.

Nathan

Re:"Standard du jure" [sic]?

[Idaho]

1) I think you mean "du jour"
2) I don't think "du jour" means what you think it means.

He actually meant "de jure", not "du jure", which indeed doesn't make much sense.

From wikipedia:

De jure (in Classical Latin de iure) is an expression that means "based on law", as contrasted with de facto, which means "in fact".

source

So what he was actually trying to say is not supposed to be French (although French, being a roman language, is indeed similar to Latin).

Great news, but not necessarily a free-for-all

[The Empiricist]

It is wonderful to hear that the PDF specification will be the subject of open standardization. Caution should be exercised when implementing products though. Almost 400 patents have been granted to Adobe. Adobe has another 50 patent applications in process. There may also be additional patents that have been assigned to Adobe or that Adobe has an exclusive license to practice. Adobe may also have intellectual property in foreign markets that are greater in scope than what Adobe has in the United States.

Caution should be exercised because ISO does not require that its standards be patent-free. Necessary patents merely must be available on a reasonable and non-discriminatory basis. Adobe (or anyone else really) may also seek patents on how PDFs are used, manipulated, etc.

This doesn't necessarily mean that Adobe is bad or that any Open Source Software projects will ever face any obstacles from Adobe. It simply means that some care should be taken to determine whether any of Adobe's patents cover features of the PDF standard or its uses, especially when developing software that mimics an existing proprietary product. If there is a question, then OSS developers should contact Adobe to try to get a license (perhaps for the consideration of a promise that the resulting product remain open source).

Re:Oh dear God.

[penix1]

I like plain text or html files much better, they are far more efficient, reliable and compatible.

Plain text and HTML are far from "compatible". You lose formatting, layout, and readibility not to mention that those formats don't print very well. Another thing that you lose is the permanence of it. I can scan a signed document into PDF and be assured it will stay the same. The only wat to achieve that is to use HTML (a 50% reduction in your choices right off the bat) and scan it as an image.

B.

Re:Well...

[ettlz]

There is no reason that it needs to cost so much to create non-editable documents.

Quite, which is why things like PDFCreator exist.

Dont confuse OpenSource with Open Standards

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Let us not confuse Open Source with Open Standards with Free software.

There can be no doubt or argument that there should be only one open standard. Open meaning not owned by any entity or for-profit company. Ideally the standard should be specified and updated on behalf of all the consumers or all the people by the government or an institute chartered by it. The Standard specifying body should be completely neutral and agnostic. It should allow all players, big and small, for profit and non-profit, commercial and non commercial a level playing field. Such is the case with your nuts and bolts (SAE and DIN spec) or your engine oil or light bulbs or extension cords or ASCII encoding (not EBCDIE if any remembers that) and ANSI language specs.

Open Source, one can debate, one can agree to various extent the usefulness or the lack of it. Pros and cons you can disagree with me. As long as neither you nor I control the standards, it is a level playing field and the market and history will prove either you or me as correct. Same with free software.

Currently there are three standards being specified. Which itself is bad. OpenDoc, a microsoft thingie called OpenXML and now the OpenPDF. I like OpenXML least because it pretends to be a standard but it cant be implemented by all players without help/license from Microsoft. It has the audaucity to enshrine bugs of Office97 and Word6 and WordPerfect5 as standards . OpenDoc is already well on its way in the standards process. PDF has a much wider user installed base and has a financial muscle of a decent profit making company and its self interest. I wish PDF and OpenDoc will merge and come up with a unified standard.

Re:Other apps can edit PDFs now?

[Noksagt]

There are a lot of ways to edit PDFs. Sometimes it is worth converting to postscript, as you'll have even more tools. The tools below are free/open source and run on Linux. Most also work on other operating systems. If you are willing to take a proprietary solution, there are even more options:

• flpsed
• PDF Edit
• KWord
• Scribus
• Inkscape
• GIMP
• pdftk
• Jarnal
• Multivalent

Via AIM?

[exploder]

AdobeGrl2002: then like u put a 64-byte header blok
ISO_19_TX: thats hot