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Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: Wordman wordman@*******.com
Subject: [OT] Authors of PDF
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 19:09:24 -0500
If you're like me, you think Acrobat/PDF is the greatest thing ever for
distributing WYSIWYG files. That may soon change for the worse:

http://macweek.zdnet.com/1999/11/21/offthepress.html
Message no. 2
From: MC23 mc23@**********.com
Subject: [OT] Authors of PDF
Date: Wed, 24 Nov 1999 00:59:09 -0500
Once upon a time, Wordman wrote;

>If you're like me, you think Acrobat/PDF is the greatest thing ever for
>distributing WYSIWYG files. That may soon change for the worse:
>
>http://macweek.zdnet.com/1999/11/21/offthepress.html

Maybe I'm being premature but I find it annoying but not world
destroying. I've yet to do intensive work with PDF's but from casual
playing around I'd prefer to avoid embedding fonts. I'm more concerned
about usefulness and size than whether it shows up in Exocet, Manson,
Willow, or "fill in the latest rage in fonts here". If it's real
important then just turn it into an image.
Now I could end up eating those words later, but I'll do that only
when the time comes (if it ever does). But thanks for pointing it out.
That is good to know in advance.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed,
briefed, debriefed, or numbered "
-No. 6, The Prisoner

I am MC23
Message no. 3
From: Wordman wordman@*******.com
Subject: [OT] Authors of PDF
Date: Wed, 24 Nov 1999 15:10:52 -0500
MC23 wrote:
> Maybe I'm being premature but I find it annoying but not world
> destroying. I've yet to do intensive work with PDF's but from casual
> playing around I'd prefer to avoid embedding fonts. I'm more concerned
> about usefulness and size than whether it shows up in Exocet, Manson,
> Willow, or "fill in the latest rage in fonts here". If it's real
> important then just turn it into an image.

I bet you use Win32, then. If you don't embed the fonts, then it is either
a) the machine looking at the PDF must have the font used or b) the
document must look good using the default Acrobat font. If both of these
are false, then the document looks like hell and you might as well have
just sent an RTF file.

Generally, if a Win32 person gives a PDF file without fancy fonts to
another Win32 user, case a applies and the doc looks fine. View that doc on
any other platform, however, and it looks hideous. This is largely because
Microsoft decided that they were going to use a totally different
definition of "point" than everyone else on the planet, in spite of
"point"
be pretty rigidly defined by the font foundries for decades (centuries
even, back when "leading" actually referred to lead). The point is, when
this happens, the document is no longer "portable".

If you can figure a way to build a highly formatted PDF that a) uses no
embedded fonts, b) is cross-platform and c) looks good, let me know.
Message no. 4
From: John john@*******.com
Subject: [OT] Authors of PDF
Date: Wed, 24 Nov 1999 15:33:32 -0500
Wordman wrote:

> MC23 wrote:
> > Maybe I'm being premature but I find it annoying but not world
> > destroying. I've yet to do intensive work with PDF's but from casual
> > playing around I'd prefer to avoid embedding fonts. I'm more concerned
> > about usefulness and size than whether it shows up in Exocet, Manson,
> > Willow, or "fill in the latest rage in fonts here". If it's real
> > important then just turn it into an image.
>
> I bet you use Win32, then. If you don't embed the fonts, then it is either
> a) the machine looking at the PDF must have the font used or b) the
> document must look good using the default Acrobat font. If both of these
> are false, then the document looks like hell and you might as well have
> just sent an RTF file.
>
> Generally, if a Win32 person gives a PDF file without fancy fonts to
> another Win32 user, case a applies and the doc looks fine. View that doc on
> any other platform, however, and it looks hideous. This is largely because
> Microsoft decided that they were going to use a totally different
> definition of "point" than everyone else on the planet, in spite of
"point"
> be pretty rigidly defined by the font foundries for decades (centuries
> even, back when "leading" actually referred to lead). The point is, when
> this happens, the document is no longer "portable".
>
> If you can figure a way to build a highly formatted PDF that a) uses no
> embedded fonts, b) is cross-platform and c) looks good, let me know.

I get your "point"
Message no. 5
From: Ojaste,James [NCR] James.Ojaste@**.GC.CA
Subject: [OT] Authors of PDF
Date: Wed, 24 Nov 1999 15:56:40 -0500
> From: Wordman [mailto:wordman@*******.com]
> Sent: November 24, 1999 15:11
>
> I bet you use Win32, then. If you don't embed the fonts, then
> it is either
> a) the machine looking at the PDF must have the font used or b) the

Or an acceptable substitute ("Helvetica" -> "Arial") and a
mechanism
to substitute it silently...

> document must look good using the default Acrobat font. If
> both of these
> are false, then the document looks like hell and you might as
> well have
> just sent an RTF file.

I prefer HTML, myself. :-)

> Generally, if a Win32 person gives a PDF file without fancy fonts to

I assume you meant "without embedded fonts" here...

> another Win32 user, case a applies and the doc looks fine.
> View that doc on
> any other platform, however, and it looks hideous. This is

A lot of PDFs look hideous on Win32, too; it's incredible the number
of PDF documents that contain nothing but text with a bit of formatting
for the document title (because they want 2 columns, I expect).

Pitiful, really.

> largely because
> Microsoft decided that they were going to use a totally different
> definition of "point" than everyone else on the planet, in
> spite of "point"
> be pretty rigidly defined by the font foundries for decades (centuries
> even, back when "leading" actually referred to lead). The
> point is, when
> this happens, the document is no longer "portable".

True - the only way to ensure identical output is to incorporate all
the data.

> If you can figure a way to build a highly formatted PDF that
> a) uses no
> embedded fonts, b) is cross-platform and c) looks good, let me know.

1) Translate the post-fonted text into pure PS. This will balloon the
size of the file, but the character data is just as hard to extract as
it is now.
2) Use high-res rasterization
3) Define a standard set of fonts that are the only ones supported

Just off the top of my head... None of them are in very wide use
simply because embedding fonts solves the problem neatly without the
nasty side effects of the 3 listed above.

This is one reason I like my documents in HTML - you can't say for
sure that you'll get a given font, so don't count on it. Using CSS
you can get some pretty nicely formatted documents (I do all my
character sheets in HTML/CSS these days)...

James Ojaste
Message no. 6
From: MC23 mc23@**********.com
Subject: [OT] Authors of PDF
Date: Thu, 25 Nov 1999 08:54:49 -0500
Once upon a time, Wordman wrote;

>I bet you use Win32, then. If you don't embed the fonts, then it is either
>a) the machine looking at the PDF must have the font used or b) the
>document must look good using the default Acrobat font. If both of these
>are false, then the document looks like hell and you might as well have
>just sent an RTF file.

WIN32? RTF? B>P#
I'm a Mac user and I normally work in Quark Xpress when it comes to
documents. As I've said, I've only dabbled in Acrobat and I'm used to the
majority of the world not recognizing the files I work with anyway. The
majority of what I've done has been in packaging and print or just images
in general.
Anyway this has gotten too off topic so this is all I will say about
it on the list. If you care to talk more about Acrobat write me off list.
If I ever have an excuse I'd love to play around more with it.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Ancient cultures believed that names held great power, personal names
more so and they were guarded very closely. To protect themselves, they
answered to another name, because if another discovered their real name,
it could be used against them.
History repeats itself.
Welcome to the Digital Age.
I am MC23

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Thwap!