Hi Free-PDF-Hackers,
we have been contacted by Adobe, because of pdfreaders.org . All-in-all they seem to welcome the campaign, as they see it as a confirmation of PDF's status as an open standard. However they are "worried" about certain things, like standard-compliance of the named readers.
Anyway, they want to talk with us, so we will have a conference call sometime next week. We don't expect them to announce a free software version of acroread, but we think it is good opportunity to start talking with them. They are taking pdfreaders.org and the free software readers seriously and seem to be very interested in PDF's public perception as *the* standard for printable documents (maybe because XPS is around the corner).
Now our question to you is: * What do you see as a major obstacle to better PDF-Support and/or standard- compliance in the free readers? * Does Adobe in any way hinder the development? * In what ways could Adobe help to improve the free readers? * Is there anything else you think should be mentioned?
You may of course fwd this to other involved developers, but please do *not* discuss this topic on public mailing lists, at least not before our conference call.
Thanks for your help! Of course we will let you know how the call went.
Regards, Hannes
--- El sáb, 21/2/09, Hannes Hauswedell escribió:
Asunto: Adobe reaching out to FSFE on pdfreaders.org Fecha: sábado, 21 febrero, 2009 8:28 Hi Free-PDF-Hackers,
we have been contacted by Adobe, because of pdfreaders.org . All-in-all they seem to welcome the campaign, as they see it as a confirmation of PDF's status as an open standard. However they are "worried" about certain things, like standard-compliance of the named readers.
Of course, there is no standard-compliance free reader with something like the PDF specification is impossible to really implement all the standard without a horde of developers, something that does not seem to happen for any of the free pdf readers as our current standard-compliance is mostly good enough for the 99% of cases. Besides that, not even Adobe products are spec compliant, if you see the specification there are several implementation notes saying "Adobe products ignore this flag/feature/attribute"
Anyway, they want to talk with us, so we will have a conference call sometime next week. We don't expect them to announce a free software version of acroread, but we think it is good opportunity to start talking with them. They are taking pdfreaders.org and the free software readers seriously and seem to be very interested in PDF's public perception as *the* standard for printable documents (maybe because XPS is around the corner).
Now our question to you is:
- What do you see as a major obstacle to better PDF-Support
and/or standard- compliance in the free readers?
time & money ;-) But the FSF is already fixing that in GNUPDF, right?
- Does Adobe in any way hinder the development?
Nothing besides adding yet another useless feature from version to version
- In what ways could Adobe help to improve the free
readers?
Adding some implementation notes on what they do when the pdf files are not spec compliant, lots of times broken pdf producers rely on Adobe's behaviour of bypassing broken pdf files, and it's already difficult enough doing correct things correct, so mimicing Adobe's error correction by just guessing is very painful at less.
- Is there anything else you think should be mentioned?
I'd like Adobe to issue a public statement saying they are not going to sue us for bypassing their "copyright management system" based on the fact that pdf readers have to obey a set of bits on the PDF file that for examples make the pdf not printable, text of the document not copiable, etc. Actually i've always thought they could sue us under the DMCA for breaking their "non piracy" system although it's completely non secure at all and broken by design.
Not sure if they already did when ISO approved PDF as a standard or not, but issuing a public statement saying their are not going to use any of the patents they have over third party developers would be a good idea too.
Albert
You may of course fwd this to other involved developers, but please do *not* discuss this topic on public mailing lists, at least not before our conference call.
Thanks for your help! Of course we will let you know how the call went.
Regards, Hannes
I'd be happy to consider any reasonable request from Adobe regarding standards compliance. I think the idea of keeping PDF standardized is a good one. I really haven't had any major complaints with regard to Adobe's stewardship of the PDF spec. And frankly, their spec document is *FAR* better written than any of the ISO specs I've had to deal with (JBIG2, JPEG 2000, etc.).
In my view, the biggest problem is buggy PDF generators. It seems that most PDF generator authors test their code with one version of Acrobat (whatever they happen to have installed) on Windows, and if it looks ok there, they assume their software is correct.
There was a short-lived project several years ago, intended to put together a tool which would scan a generated PDF file for problems. As I recall, Adobe was running the project, and several commercial PDF software vendors (including myself) were involved. Unfortunately, the project died before it really went anywhere. I still think that something of this sort would be very helpful. To be really useful -- and the goal would be to get lots of PDF generator authors to use it -- it would probably have to be released by Adobe, or at the very least, "blessed" by Adobe.
(I have some specific suggestions for such a tool. For example, TrueType fonts are notoriously problematic, so I'd really like to see something that scanned embedded TrueType fonts for flaws. But that's all secondary to having a general framework for testing PDF files.)
- Derek
On 21 Feb, Hannes Hauswedell wrote:
Hi Free-PDF-Hackers,
we have been contacted by Adobe, because of pdfreaders.org . All-in-all they seem to welcome the campaign, as they see it as a confirmation of PDF's status as an open standard. However they are "worried" about certain things, like standard-compliance of the named readers.
Anyway, they want to talk with us, so we will have a conference call sometime next week. We don't expect them to announce a free software version of acroread, but we think it is good opportunity to start talking with them. They are taking pdfreaders.org and the free software readers seriously and seem to be very interested in PDF's public perception as *the* standard for printable documents (maybe because XPS is around the corner).
Now our question to you is:
- What do you see as a major obstacle to better PDF-Support and/or standard-
compliance in the free readers?
- Does Adobe in any way hinder the development?
- In what ways could Adobe help to improve the free readers?
- Is there anything else you think should be mentioned?
You may of course fwd this to other involved developers, but please do *not* discuss this topic on public mailing lists, at least not before our conference call.
Thanks for your help! Of course we will let you know how the call went.
Regards, Hannes