Computerphile made a 30th anniversary video about PDFs. somebody on here seemed irritated with the whole format, because insisting on having a specific layout is bad when devices have different form factors.
the way we use PDFs these days is very much not what it was intended for though.
the format emerged in the 90s when DTP (desktop publishing) was a buzzword, and everyone who was running a newspaper or print shop was keen to migrate to a computerised workflow.
at the time, digital as a mass medium for publishing was still very much a niche thing. but this meant that using digital for content production offered a competitive advantage.
there was no standard space-efficient digital format for publishers to send exact page layouts with embedded fonts, vector graphics and photos over email to print shops with at the time.
PDF supports a lot of professional features that print shops use, because that's what it was designed for. using it as the "Internet document format" came later on and Adobe wasn't planning on that one, i think.
the same channel has episodes on EPS - a predecessor to PDF - and on early laser printers. it just used to be a big deal that computers could print fonts and graphics.
people hate PDFs now but that's because they're being used for the wrong purpose.
Computerphile made a 30th anniversary video about PDFs. somebody on here seemed irritated with the whole format, because insisting on having a specific layout is bad when devices have different form factors.
the way we use PDFs these days is very much not what it was intended for though.
the format emerged in the 90s when DTP (desktop publishing) was a buzzword, and everyone who was running a newspaper or print shop was keen to migrate to a computerised workflow.
@lore Early 2000's I did lots of EPS and PDF juggling to the point I bought a book about Postscript to get even further into the inner workings .. as being an employee in a media house, everything were EPS ... up to the point where the CTP (Computer to plate) process produced something physical -- the aluminum sheet, "plate", with etched negative for the printing press.
@lore I was involved in the creation of page description language translators back when EPS came out, as well as PostScript translators. It has one additional benefit for many companies: proprietary data (fonts, layout techniques) can be encrypted and (at the time) could be made more difficult to copy.
Anyway, thanks for the review. It was a big deal at the time and you're right that they're now trying to do markup in a language meant for layout.