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PDF Is Now ISO 32000

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the long-and-winding-road dept.

It is official. As PDF Architect Jim King blogged today, Adobe has received word that the ballot for approval of PDF 1.7 to become the ISO 32000 Standard (DIS) has passed by a vote of 13 positive to 1 negative. A two-thirds majority is required to pass so it was a large margin of victory (93%). The vote breaks down as follows: Countries voting positive with no comments (9): Australia, Bulgaria, China, Japan, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine. Countries voting positive with comments (4): UK (13 comments), USA (125), Germany (11), Switzerland (19). Countries voting negative with comments (1): France (37 comments). Countries abstaining (1): Russia.

19 of 410 comments (clear)

  1. ISO? by tepples · · Score: 5, Funny

    So where can I download an ISO of PDF tools?

    1. Re:ISO? by AKAImBatman · · Score: 5, Informative

      While I realize this is supposed to be an amusing turn of phrase, there are actually quite a few tools out there. A few that I like are:

      PDFBox - OSS Library for modifying PDFs on the fly.
      FOP - Use XSL-FO to design printable page layouts in XML, then use FOP to transform them to PDF documents.
      Foxit Tools - Alternative to the overpriced Adobe products.
      OpenOffice - The built-in support for PDFs is absolutely wonderful. I rarely give out DOC files anymore.
      FPDF - PHP PDF generation tools.
      iText - A great library for your own custom PDF generation.

      Those are just a few. The PDF format itself is actually not too bad. (When Adobe isn't breaking it with needless revisions, that is.) It's biggest strength is that the psuedo-text nature of the format allows one to diagnose the internals of a file pretty easily. Its greatest weakness is that things like text fields are needlessly convoluted. At the end of the day, though, it's a pretty good format.

      --
      Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
  2. France... by nebaz · · Score: 5, Funny

    We should rename the application "Freedom Bat Reader", to protest their no vote.

    --
    Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
    1. Re:France... by 644bd346996 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      RTFA. It's almost a subtle jab at how different the PDF standardization process has been from the OOXML standardization attempt. The PDF process has been straightforward, with no "trickery," and the proponents were actually working to improve the standard and resolve technical problems.

    2. Re:France... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      OK so why is this good but the Microsoft format is bad?
      Go look at the specs for OOXML. They're an embarrassment to the computer science community. You'd think there was no such thing as formal requirements. PDF is very well defined, which makes it possible for third parties to use it.
      I might also add that the entire point behind the ambiguity in OOXML is to lock users into Microsoft Office. I can use any PDF viewer, because it is a well defined standard, but if the only viewer that displayed PDF's 100% correctly was Adobe's, I'd have to use them. Same idea with OOXML. If 90% of the world uses Microsoft's interpretation of the standard, and I try to use something else, everyone else is going to have trouble with my documents. I'll have to use Microsoft Office, or have people be annoyed with my poorly formed documents.

      I'm not anti-Microsoft, I'm just disgusted with this issue.
    3. Re:France... by mysticgoat · · Score: 5, Insightful

      OK so why is this good but the Microsoft format is bad?

      Let me count the ways that PDF succeeds:

      1. Over two dozen pdf readers and editors available
      2. Full support on numerous different platforms
      3. Full support from multiple vendors
      4. Complete documentation
      5. Reasonably concise documentation
      6. Clear documentation
      7. Free of proprietary constraints
      8. And probably a number of other reasons, but this short list should suffice.

      If OOXML met these criteria, it would stand a fair chance of becoming an accepted standard, too. But Microsoft does not seem to think that meeting these criteria are in its best interests, presumably because that would mean that people could use OOXML without buying licenses to Microsoft products. Microsoft isn't thinking clearly at this time; it is confusing some of the fantasy aspects of its "vision" with the evolving realities of the market it is trying to sell product to.

  3. In case we forget. by Protonk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Another standard from our friends the ISO. I'm glad the .pdf is now a documented standard, but this doesn't really mean TOO much in the document world. It might convince a few pointy-haired bosses that .pdf is MUCH better than develpoing some internal document handling protocol due to the imposing and convincing sound the standard makes when spoken, but I know that most of the ISO standardization process is in name only.

    Let's not get started about process and quality management and the yellow sticky of approval that is ISO-9000.

  4. That is pretty sensitive.... by Tibor+the+Hun · · Score: 5, Funny

    I dunno much, but ISO 32000 ought to be able to record photos in the very darkest of dark places.
    It's too bad they'll be saved as PDFs, I prefer to shoot RAW.

    --
    If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
    1. Re:That is pretty sensitive.... by hamisht · · Score: 5, Funny

      You mean we could finally get a picture of a grue?

    2. Re:That is pretty sensitive.... by RedBear · · Score: 5, Informative

      Film with a high ISO rating is very "fast" which means that it can shoot in very dimly lit situations. 32000 ISO, however, is fucking insane. You could pick up big-bang background noise with that shit!

      It's not insane, it's just one "f-stop" more sensitive to light than ISO 16000, which is one f-stop more sensitive than ISO 8000. We've already had ISO 6400 film for decades, and right now on the market there are a couple of cameras (like the latest flagship digital SLR from Nikon) with ISO 26500. Yes, that's twenty-six thousand, five hundred. Don't ask me how or why they did it, but they did. Nothing particularly crazy about it, in fact it's a great thing for those who need to use high shutter speeds in low light and/or can't afford ultra-expensive large aperture lenses.

      Within ten years we no doubt will be seeing some digital cameras with ISO 32000 or higher sensitivities. Now if they'd just do something about the extremely limited dynamic range...

  5. Re:Comments? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    They probably complained that the 'F' was at the end of the acronym instead of at the front.

  6. Abstaining WITH Comments by CranberryKing · · Score: 5, Funny

    Russia:

    "After long internal deliberation, we have arrived at an official position. We don't give a shit."

  7. Re:Adobe by PenGun · · Score: 5, Informative

    Xpdf opens a 114M file in under 2 secs and a 25M one is pretty well instantaneous. Some kind of windose problem no doubt.

  8. Re:Comments? by harrkev · · Score: 5, Funny
    Ok. Here is an excerpt from the French reasoning:

    How you English say, I one more time-a unclog my nose in your direction, sons of a window-dresser! So, you think you could out-clever us French folk with your silly acrobat-creating about programming behavior! I wave my private parts at your aunties, you heaving lot of second-hand electric donkey bottom biters.
    --
    "-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
  9. PDF Tainted by Shitty Adobe Reader by ComputerPhreak · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's sad that PDF, which seems like a pretty good format to me, has earned such a poor reputation. It has nothing to do with the format, rather, it has everything to do with the shitty software Adobe has put out to read PDFs. Sure, recent versions of Reader have improved loading time, and there are alternative packages available for reading, but the precedent was set around the time Reader 6 or 7 came out, as PDF usage was exploding. I grimmace everytime I see a link to a PDF on my Windows machine or on a Solaris workstation. Both have Reader installed, and it is a truly shitty piece of software: the load time is far too long (even with the latest improvements), it has embedded ads, the interface doesn't match the platform's Look & Feel well... the list goes on. Adobe could do a lot to spur the popularity of PDF by releasing a really high quality reader... but the damage may have already been too great.

  10. Re:PDF is nice, but Acrobat ain't by f1055man · · Score: 5, Funny

    NOOOOO!!! please not another upgrade. It nags me three weeks before an upgrade. NO, I DONT WANT TO FUCKING UPGRADE!!! And three weeks after an upgrade. I ALREADY FUCKING UPGRADED IT!!! Then it resets all my file extension defaults and starts opening everything in Acrobat Reader 8 even though I've told it a million times to open with Acrobat Pro 5. Fucking piece of shit must die.

    Note to Acrobat developers, if anyone asks what you do, lie. It could be me. I will fucking kill you and then skull fuck you. I will kill your fucking family and skull fuck them. I will kill your fucking pets and skull fuck them. I will burn your fucking house down and find a way to skull fuck that too. And no jury will convict, they'll wish they had gotten to you first.

    Sorry. The first hundred pages of my shit list are devoted solely to Acrobat. Deep breaths, deep breaths

  11. Re:Adobe by forkazoo · · Score: 5, Informative

    Great, now just make a reader that doesn't slow my system down to a crawl while opening a 100K document.


    The whole point of standardization is that it doesn't matter what Adobe does. Anybody can impliment the standard without too much trouble. Though, in practice, it was a DeFacto standard anyway, and there is already a ton of software that supports PDF. I haven't used Adobe's PDF reader in years.

    xpdf, kpdf, Preview.app, Foxit Reader, etc. all work and between them probably support damn near any platform you would want to use. I use Foxit on my Windows machines, and I find it to be very convenient software which is fast, light, and mostly stays out of my way.
  12. The Russians by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    The Russians are waiting for PDF to vote for THEM...

  13. Re:PDF works by tonyr60 · · Score: 5, Informative

    PDF was never intended to be edited, once published. The objective of the format it that it can be rendered as the author intended, not edited.