Grousing about PDFs: Gently But More People Need to Object
August 11, 2020
I learned about a file format that could be viewed or printed exactly like a composed page in the late 1980s. I think the technology was called Trapeze. A large New York outfit published books and magazines. These could be printed on paper using a series of manual and computer assisted work processes. The publishing outfit was on the look out for a way to create electronic replicas that were visually faithful to the printed version of a document, magazine, or book. The technology emerged after years of “stealth” trials and demonstrations as the Adobe Portable Document Format. Let’s assume that my recollection of Adobe Trapeze is correct. That makes the lovable Portable Document Format language, its original counter dongle thing, and its wonky limitations more than 30 years young. I thought about PDFs, which are now ubiquitous, when I read “PDF: Still Unfit for Human Consumption, 20 Years Later.” Yeah, the date is off, but the main idea of the article seems valid. PDFs suck.
According to the write up:
PDFs are typically large masses of text and images. The format is intended and optimized for print. It’s inherently inaccessible, unpleasant to read, and cumbersome to navigate online.
An important point in the write up seems to be:
Burying information in PDFs means that most people won’t read it. Participants in several of our recent usability studies on corporate websites and intranets did not appreciate PDFs and skipped right over them. They complained woefully whenever they encountered PDF files and many who opened PDFs quickly abandoned them.
What’s the fix? The write up suggests HTML Gateway pages. That’s an interesting idea, but it may be difficult to automate without some ground swell of support for this approach: A link, a summary, and then the PDF. So, think non starter.
I don’t want to dwell on the why a PDF is the way it is. The important point is that Adobe made the PDF an open standard. Why? Can you imagine trying to rehab a Trapeze artist who has minimal balance, a fear of heights, and greasy fingers?
Acrobat is anchored in the centuries-old tradition of print. Postscript solved some typesetting problems. Acrobat fell off the high wire. Today, the beloved but addled performer is popular, but his tricks are no longer capable of evoking applause.
Adobe now sells subscriptions, not Acrobat dongles. Adobe does not have a cost effective way of keeping its software from delivering malware into the soft innards of a user’s computing device. Adobe has made the PDF open so it can leave the innovation to the community to use.
When you want to make life difficult for a researcher, create an unindexed PDF. Let the user figure out how to OCR the page replica and then search the text. Nifty. Want a PDF to open a specific number of times and then block additional accesses? Well, figure it out yourself. Want a page replica of a patent filing that can be navigated in a seamless way? Get serious, folks.
Adobe sells subscriptions, not usability. Hopefully someone with an “affinity” for producing documents will come up with a solution. Neither the community or Adobe have cracked the code.
Stephen E Arnold, August 11, 2020
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