As a test for the verbosity, I created a single page document in Windows Write with the text "Hello World" on it and "printed" it to a file using the Windows HP Color Laserjet 8500 PS driver in XP Service Pack 3. I distilled that file using Acrobat Distiller 9 (from the Acrobat 9 Pro product). I used the "standard" option. Results are labeled "Size1". I also did the same with a list of server names (42 lines long, 1KB txt file)(Size2). Then I took an existing 52KB PDF file, a 3-page phone list with fonts and formatting (Size3), printed it to PostScript from within Acrobat 9, then distilled the output using Distiller 9 and compared sizes. (Yes the resulting PDF looked just like the original PDF). Here are the results:
So for small file sizes you're right, it doesn't make a difference. For larger files, at least for my examples, PDF is substantially smaller even than GZipped PS.
There is no reason one couldn't create a multithreaded PDF reader -- unlike PostScript you don't have to render all pages up to the current one. Each page has a TOC with links to each stream, along with positioning information for that stream.
As far as mobile support goes, if it's so lightweight in size and rendering requirements, it would be widely supported. I think you're confusing RISC capabilities with CISC capabilities. Formatting PS in printers (and on the NeXT platform) has almost always traditionally been done using RISC chips.
Other than PostScript being an overly verbose language (you don't want 20MB PS files to be the new norm do you?), it's not readily consumable by Windows. No built-in reader or viewer, the best you can do with it is convert it to PDF.
Let's not forget its overly verbose nature also means it's inappropriate for handheld devices.
As I understand it, PostScript has a single thread of execution when being read -- it's a script which has to be executed linearly -- in other words it "runs" much like a tape. PDF has the ability for multiple streams (everything's a stream in PDF, whether it's text, graphics, or whatever) to be processed / rendered in parallel. Unless I'm wrong this is a considerable speed disadvantage as well.
The companies which require this functionality have already decided to use the market leader's product. Since you have absolutely no way of convincing them all to switch to something else, perhaps you should be the one to look for alternative solutions.
You had a niche application, WYSISWYPrint. Try to compete with the swift, quick to load, quick to render competition or you will be lost in the netherworld between browsers and pdf renderers.
If anything, the PDF standard is increasing usage worldwide. PDF is a very well documented standard -- I speak as someone who wrote a program to create PDF files with images and form fields from scratch using VB 6 with no plugins -- so go ahead and create your own reader, market it and make it the #1. Nothing's stopping you.
This has nothing to do with "web security" -- IE's problems are because it allows access for remote sites to local resources. It also has a lot of holes.
MIME types -- the things that enable launching Acrobat when a PDF file is encountered -- are used to determine how to display images, sounds etc. Surely you're not advocating disabling all MIME types, or confirming each one? You could have a plain text page with no images, sounds, etc and you'd never be surprised by things launching or displaying without your permission. You might as well use Lynx at that point.
The "redaction" was because someone used a text object to overlay the source. They could have avoided failure by using the built-in redaction feature, modifying the pages at the source and generating the PDF from that, or scanning the original (with redacted sections blacked out) as graphics.
Agreed. I went from 5 to 9 and wow what a shock. Although I have to admit the last patch helped tremendously (it was suffering from really poor load times).
And, Adobe, get rid of that stupid FNPLicensingService.exe spyware that tries to run constantly in the background. I detest the idea of not being trusted when I *PAID* for the damn software!
Using a PDF means you don't have to worry about spreadsheet versions. A spreadsheet app is also substantially larger than a PDF reader. Not everyone even has spreadsheet software installed on their computer.
No, in this context I mean sites such as FaceBook. It may look like a blog but it's not, the main difference is that everything on a blog is intended to be public and everything on a social site such as FaceBook is probably intended to have different levels of privacy depending on the viewer's relationship to you. As was said elsewhere, there are things you would tell your family you wouldn't tell your boss, and perhaps other things you would tell your friends you wouldn't tell your family and/or boss.
Probably the easiest way to sum this up: Each of us has many facets of our life and only some of those are intended to be public.
Wow, it hasn't reached that point here in SE Florida. Publix is by far the largest and they don't use a card for discounts. Winn-Dixie, Albertson's and/or Food Lion may but they're considered low-quality stores in comparison, even inferior to Wal-Mart (which doesn't use cards either). I also haven't seen anything like this in Whole Foods or local mom-and-pop independent grocery stores. I hope this type of thing doesn't catch on en masse.
I have both MS Office and OpenOffice 3.1. I use Visio in the MS Office suite and very occasionally Excel (when I need to do more advanced trend lines in graphs). I use OpenOffice daily both for home and work. It's not slow for me. To each his/her own.
Why both you ask? I was doing some relatively large file manipulation in Word (8000 page files) and it kept crashing. OpenOffice did not. I figured if it worked so well for a Word replacement it might work as an Excel replacement. It did. Now I have one version of an app I can use wherever I want and it's free.
Of course it's funny when someone has an old Word file they can't open in Word anymore. I load it in OpenOffice and save-as -- while the results aren't always perfect at least it's usable.
I have pics of my family online because we have a large extended family and it's easier to share this way, but I certainly don't want every pervert in the world to be able to see them. I use a private site to accomplish this, but I could easily see how others -- who may not be technically inclined to get their own hosting plan and learn how to set this up themselves -- might use private FaceBook (or other pages) to do the same thing.
There are different levels of privacy -- for instance I'm fine with sharing some documents and pics with my entire extended family (kids' wish lists, family pics). There are some documents that only my immediate family should be able to see (passwords, etc in case something happens to me). There are other documents that only my employer should be able to see (because of NDA's and all that, some documents should not be viewed by my family). And then you have things such as browsing history / bookmarks that I consider very private not because there's anything bad about them but because I consider myself fairly private in most regards and that's just nobody's business.
All this could explain why I may have a "faked" FaceBook account with false info, but that's only because I wanted to look someone up and apparently you have to be a member to do that.
I use NoScript and AdBlock Plus. All the trackers I've ever encountered (for Google that's googlesyndication, google-analytics, etc etc) are blocked.
It's very simple -- when I visit a page all the 3rd party sites that I've not voted on appear in a list. If I don't know them and explicitly trust them they get blocked. Very very occasionally I have to unblock one temporarily -- and even more occasionally I have to unblock one permanently.
Even if I could see the ads I have never noticed any directed at me or with content based on my interests or browsing habits (other than the current site/page -- if I'm on a cooking site I might see ads for cooking etc).
Any system which defaults to "share everything" is a fail. You should never have to opt-out, only opt-in, to release data. Otherwise it's way too easy to screw up and show something private to everyone (as in this example).
That type of pricing is not very helpful, and online stores or storefronts who insist on doing this (Bi-Lo grocery stores are one example) will never get my business. At Bi-Lo many of the prices might as well be retail if you don't agree to give them your personal information and get a card... for example Oreos were $4.50 when they were 2 for $4 or 2 for $5 everywhere else. I didn't know the card was required (the big sale signs say nothing about a card) and got to the register and was shocked. That was my first and last time in a Bi-Lo store, and yes I told them where to place their cookies.
Fortunately these stores are the minority now, but what happens when everyone demands you information to give you a price? I'm not looking forward to that.
And what about people who try to be anonymous? Will the prices for them act as a "list price" -- a price so high no one pays it, except for those unwilling to give up their anonymity? This sounds like bad news.
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As a test for the verbosity, I created a single page document in Windows Write with the text "Hello World" on it and "printed" it to a file using the Windows HP Color Laserjet 8500 PS driver in XP Service Pack 3. I distilled that file using Acrobat Distiller 9 (from the Acrobat 9 Pro product). I used the "standard" option. Results are labeled "Size1". I also did the same with a list of server names (42 lines long, 1KB txt file)(Size2). Then I took an existing 52KB PDF file, a 3-page phone list with fonts and formatting (Size3), printed it to PostScript from within Acrobat 9, then distilled the output using Distiller 9 and compared sizes. (Yes the resulting PDF looked just like the original PDF). Here are the results:
Type / Filesize1 / Filesize2 / Filesize3
PS / 28KB / 27KB / 748KB
PS (GZip) / 10KB / 9KB / 111KB
PDF / 9KB / 24KB / 42KB
So for small file sizes you're right, it doesn't make a difference. For larger files, at least for my examples, PDF is substantially smaller even than GZipped PS.
There is no reason one couldn't create a multithreaded PDF reader -- unlike PostScript you don't have to render all pages up to the current one. Each page has a TOC with links to each stream, along with positioning information for that stream.
As far as mobile support goes, if it's so lightweight in size and rendering requirements, it would be widely supported. I think you're confusing RISC capabilities with CISC capabilities. Formatting PS in printers (and on the NeXT platform) has almost always traditionally been done using RISC chips.
Other than PostScript being an overly verbose language (you don't want 20MB PS files to be the new norm do you?), it's not readily consumable by Windows. No built-in reader or viewer, the best you can do with it is convert it to PDF.
Let's not forget its overly verbose nature also means it's inappropriate for handheld devices.
As I understand it, PostScript has a single thread of execution when being read -- it's a script which has to be executed linearly -- in other words it "runs" much like a tape. PDF has the ability for multiple streams (everything's a stream in PDF, whether it's text, graphics, or whatever) to be processed / rendered in parallel. Unless I'm wrong this is a considerable speed disadvantage as well.
You had a niche application, WYSISWYPrint. Try to compete with the swift, quick to load, quick to render competition or you will be lost in the netherworld between browsers and pdf renderers.
If anything, the PDF standard is increasing usage worldwide. PDF is a very well documented standard -- I speak as someone who wrote a program to create PDF files with images and form fields from scratch using VB 6 with no plugins -- so go ahead and create your own reader, market it and make it the #1. Nothing's stopping you.
This has nothing to do with "web security" -- IE's problems are because it allows access for remote sites to local resources. It also has a lot of holes.
MIME types -- the things that enable launching Acrobat when a PDF file is encountered -- are used to determine how to display images, sounds etc. Surely you're not advocating disabling all MIME types, or confirming each one? You could have a plain text page with no images, sounds, etc and you'd never be surprised by things launching or displaying without your permission. You might as well use Lynx at that point.
The "redaction" was because someone used a text object to overlay the source. They could have avoided failure by using the built-in redaction feature, modifying the pages at the source and generating the PDF from that, or scanning the original (with redacted sections blacked out) as graphics.
You can't blame the tool for its clueless users.
Agreed. I went from 5 to 9 and wow what a shock. Although I have to admit the last patch helped tremendously (it was suffering from really poor load times).
And, Adobe, get rid of that stupid FNPLicensingService.exe spyware that tries to run constantly in the background. I detest the idea of not being trusted when I *PAID* for the damn software!
As has been discussed countless times in this thread already, turn off JavaScript if you don't need it. The rest of us use it for business purposes.
Sounds like you need NoScript and AdBlock.
As others have mentioned, many businesses use the JavaScript features for field validation, action buttons, loading content from a remote DB, etc.
How else do you get portable documentation if you don't use PDF? There's no other format that can do what it can do, period.
Cost -- the full product is hundreds of dollars -- and brand recognition, which is important to PHB's.
Using a PDF means you don't have to worry about spreadsheet versions. A spreadsheet app is also substantially larger than a PDF reader. Not everyone even has spreadsheet software installed on their computer.
Plus with the PostgreSQL install, after you're done you can have a LAPP dance to celebrate.
If Nissan = MySQL, Ford/Chrysler = Microsoft Access.
No, in this context I mean sites such as FaceBook. It may look like a blog but it's not, the main difference is that everything on a blog is intended to be public and everything on a social site such as FaceBook is probably intended to have different levels of privacy depending on the viewer's relationship to you. As was said elsewhere, there are things you would tell your family you wouldn't tell your boss, and perhaps other things you would tell your friends you wouldn't tell your family and/or boss.
Probably the easiest way to sum this up: Each of us has many facets of our life and only some of those are intended to be public.
Wow, it hasn't reached that point here in SE Florida. Publix is by far the largest and they don't use a card for discounts. Winn-Dixie, Albertson's and/or Food Lion may but they're considered low-quality stores in comparison, even inferior to Wal-Mart (which doesn't use cards either). I also haven't seen anything like this in Whole Foods or local mom-and-pop independent grocery stores. I hope this type of thing doesn't catch on en masse.
I have both MS Office and OpenOffice 3.1. I use Visio in the MS Office suite and very occasionally Excel (when I need to do more advanced trend lines in graphs). I use OpenOffice daily both for home and work. It's not slow for me. To each his/her own.
Why both you ask? I was doing some relatively large file manipulation in Word (8000 page files) and it kept crashing. OpenOffice did not. I figured if it worked so well for a Word replacement it might work as an Excel replacement. It did. Now I have one version of an app I can use wherever I want and it's free.
Of course it's funny when someone has an old Word file they can't open in Word anymore. I load it in OpenOffice and save-as -- while the results aren't always perfect at least it's usable.
And no more Clippy! Need I say more?
I found the solution and it works for me!!!
The obvious solution is that you aren't reloading the page enough times. Try it, it works the 16th time!!
I have pics of my family online because we have a large extended family and it's easier to share this way, but I certainly don't want every pervert in the world to be able to see them. I use a private site to accomplish this, but I could easily see how others -- who may not be technically inclined to get their own hosting plan and learn how to set this up themselves -- might use private FaceBook (or other pages) to do the same thing.
There are different levels of privacy -- for instance I'm fine with sharing some documents and pics with my entire extended family (kids' wish lists, family pics). There are some documents that only my immediate family should be able to see (passwords, etc in case something happens to me). There are other documents that only my employer should be able to see (because of NDA's and all that, some documents should not be viewed by my family). And then you have things such as browsing history / bookmarks that I consider very private not because there's anything bad about them but because I consider myself fairly private in most regards and that's just nobody's business.
All this could explain why I may have a "faked" FaceBook account with false info, but that's only because I wanted to look someone up and apparently you have to be a member to do that.
I use NoScript and AdBlock Plus. All the trackers I've ever encountered (for Google that's googlesyndication, google-analytics, etc etc) are blocked.
It's very simple -- when I visit a page all the 3rd party sites that I've not voted on appear in a list. If I don't know them and explicitly trust them they get blocked. Very very occasionally I have to unblock one temporarily -- and even more occasionally I have to unblock one permanently.
Even if I could see the ads I have never noticed any directed at me or with content based on my interests or browsing habits (other than the current site/page -- if I'm on a cooking site I might see ads for cooking etc).
Any system which defaults to "share everything" is a fail. You should never have to opt-out, only opt-in, to release data. Otherwise it's way too easy to screw up and show something private to everyone (as in this example).
That type of pricing is not very helpful, and online stores or storefronts who insist on doing this (Bi-Lo grocery stores are one example) will never get my business. At Bi-Lo many of the prices might as well be retail if you don't agree to give them your personal information and get a card... for example Oreos were $4.50 when they were 2 for $4 or 2 for $5 everywhere else. I didn't know the card was required (the big sale signs say nothing about a card) and got to the register and was shocked. That was my first and last time in a Bi-Lo store, and yes I told them where to place their cookies.
Fortunately these stores are the minority now, but what happens when everyone demands you information to give you a price? I'm not looking forward to that.
Yes, exactly my point.
...run a TeX app, a dvi viewer, Matlab, eclipse, firefox, and MS Word simultaneously
"Which one of these things is not like the other; which one of these things does not be-long..."
And what about people who try to be anonymous? Will the prices for them act as a "list price" -- a price so high no one pays it, except for those unwilling to give up their anonymity? This sounds like bad news.