Comments on: Like PDF? Time to Get a Mac.

By: Luke

Luke — Wed, 21 May 2008 01:56:58 +0000

“…controlling who can see the document, cleaning out meta-data, expiring the document, and an endless list of other (though I shudder to say it) well-intentioned DRM features around documents…”

Clearly the average user needs to be educated as to the security features available to them when creating PDFs. Ebook publishers have been using them for ages.

By: Tim

Tim — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 13:48:39 +0000

“but do you want your medical records circulating as effortlessly as those MP3s?”

I actually think I would. I would very much rather have my medical records easily accessible than not have them in an emergency. I think a DRM protection would hinder doctors’ ability to access them and be a detriment to my safety.

DRM is “Defective By Design” (http://www.defectivebydesign.org/)

By: Cote'

Cote' — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 00:40:49 +0000

“Ugh”: Yes, I’d have to agree. I’ll admit that my thinking in the above post was purely on the consuming end and “easy publishing” (as in “Print to PDF”). I’m sure if I had to deal with PDF behind-the-scenese (or any “Print to X” format) I’d be Ugh’ed myself.

By: Ugh

Ugh — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 20:09:09 +0000

PDF’s are fine and dandy for ‘looking at’ — but try and get under the hood of them and you’ll discover just what a pain in the ass they are.

And that, in most cases, goes for Mac *AND* PC.

It’s an open/closed/standard that as you said, has generated software packages up into the realm of thousands of dollars for purchase.

But being in the printing industy, there’s no other alternative other than passing around graphic files (or PostScript), and of course since it’s so (Mac wise?) easy to “Print to PDF, whee!” — you get a whole lot of PDF documents that are, in a nutshell, crap.

And since you can’t really edit a PDF like you can other document files, it’s a horrible, horrible mess to try and clean “that stuff” up.

By: Ugh

Ugh — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 20:08:46 +0000

PDF’s are fine and dandy for ‘looking at’ — but try and get under the hood of them and you’ll discover just what a pain in the ass they are.

And that, in most cases, goes for Mac *AND* PC.

It’s an open/closed/standard that as you said, has generated software packages up into the realm of thousands of dollars for purchase.

And since you can’t really edit a PDF like you can other document files, it’s a horrible, horrible mess to try and clean “that shit” up.

By: Cote'

Cote' — Sat, 03 Jun 2006 15:47:21 +0000

Indeed, I’m with both of you about their being more to the this story. I’ll admit I paid too much attention to Adobe while ignoring Microsoft.
We’ll have to see what Adobe says because, like I was saying, it seems advantagous to get PDF, out of the box, in Word.
In the mean time, I’ll be printing to PDF on OS X ;>

By: Jake

Jake — Sat, 03 Jun 2006 06:37:43 +0000

You’re spot-on Simon. Likely the “threat of lawsuit” was merely a “why are you trying to ‘embrace and extend’ the PDF document format?” I could certainly understand Adobe trying to protect the format, but charging for licensing just isn’t something that they do. See: OS X, Xpdf, etc.

In any case, the article is very low on details and doesn’t present both sides. I’m much more inclined to believe that Microsoft is crying wolf so people don’t complain too loudly about the ‘Metro‘ format.

By: Simon Phipps

Simon Phipps — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 23:59:30 +0000

While I would of course assert that the best recipe for freedom is open standards with multiple implementations at least one of which is open source, I have no glee over this dispute. It looks to me much more likely this is the next move in the promotion of Microsoft’s alternative to PDF, Metro. They will position it as “a true standard” and my gut tells me this is actually the first shot in a campaign to discredit PDF. I hope I’m wrong.