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Pdf.js Reaches First Milestone
theweatherelectric writes "The pdf.js project aims to implement a PDF viewer using standards-compliant Web technologies. The project has reached its first milestone: it renders the sample PDF (a paper on Mozilla's Tracemonkey JavaScript engine) perfectly. However, that perfection currently comes with some caveats: 'pdf.js produces different results on pretty much every element in the browser×OS matrix. We said above that pdf.js renders the Tracemonkey paper "perfectly" if you're running a Firefox nightly. On a Windows 7 machine where Firefox can use Direct2D and DirectWrite. If you ignore what appears to be a bug in DirectWrite's font hinting. The paper is rendered less well on other platforms and in older Firefoxen, and even worse in other browsers. But such is life on the bleeding edge of the web platform.'"
I can understand the use of this to find and fix browser bugs.
But it seems amazingly inferior to a platform native PDF reader, on any platform imaginable. It will be slower the native x86/ARM code by far, and won't integrate well with the desktop environment.
What's with this trend recently to build everything on fundamentally sucky technologies?
They've actually failed to grasp the point of PDF. You might as well go back to HTML if your PDF reader can't render the same everywhere considering that was the whole point of PDF to begin with.
No. The plural of "fox" is "foxes".
If someone can't use the English language correctly, how seriously do you expect me to take anything they write?
Despite your relatively low uid, you must be new to hacker slang.
from the Jargon File:
On a similarly Anglo-Saxon note, almost anything ending in ‘x’ may form plurals in ‘-xen’ (see VAXen and boxen in the main text). Even words ending in phonetic /k/ alone are sometimes treated this way; e.g., ‘soxen’ for a bunch of socks. Other funny plurals are the Hebrew-style ‘frobbotzim’ for the plural of ‘frobbozz’ (see frobnitz) and ‘Unices’ and ‘Twenices’ (rather than ‘Unixes’ and ‘Twenexes’; see Unix, TWENEX in main text). But note that ‘Twenexen’ was never used, and ‘Unixen’ was seldom sighted in the wild until the year 2000, thirty years after it might logically have come into use; it has been suggested that this is because ‘-ix’ and ‘-ex’ are Latin singular endings that attract a Latinate plural.
Now get off my lawn.