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0 pointsantisol4y ago0 comments

Way ahead of ya ;)

but you didn't address my question

0 comments

All PDF viewers are crap in my experience. If you don't agree, you haven't used PDF enough. PDF has Javascript as a programming language, it has extensions for 3D models and a ton of other stuff (I think even sound). As a format it's almost as complex as the entire web stack.

Multiple web browsers have embedded PDF viewers because the PDF viewing experience for most people sucked so much. That's not a product decision taken lightly.

Your personal experience does not reflect that of many other browser users, it seems. Even on mobile I dread clicking a PDF link.

kragen4y ago

Yeah, PDF can play embedded sound files. It is an overly complex format. Its character encodings are defined by embedded CMap files, which are a restricted subset of PostScript. It includes by reference the CCITT G3 fax standard, PNG, JPEG, JPEG-2000, JS, Deflate, TrueType, the PostScript Type 1 font format, a separate richtext format that isn't PDF for annotations (ISO 32000-1:2008 §12.7.3.4), and several other things. In different contexts it represents line endings as \r, \n, or your choice of either of those plus \r\n. And the 3-D models thing isn't an extension; it's in the base spec (§13.6), although the actual 3-D format is ECMA-363, which is included by reference, like Deflate and JPEG.

But it's nowhere close to the complexity of the entire web stack, not within an order of magnitude. It's much, much simpler.

antisolOP4y ago

You still haven't addressed my question.

I'd respond to the rest of your vague and incorrect opinions, but why would I do that if you're not even going to bother to address my points despite me asking you to repeatedly?

oblio4y ago

> You still haven't addressed my question.

If I must spell it out, there you go:

> Why was I forced to install a substandard, feature-poor, ridiculously slow pdf viewer that I never wanted and which took over as the default pdf viewer against my wishes and without asking me, just because you couldn't be bothered to install a decent one?

Because you are part of a minority of Chrome and Firefox users and I'm probably part of the majority of users, in this regard. I don't know this for sure, but if a Google program manager decided to back building and embedding an entire PDF reader into a browser, I'm 99% convinced this is true.

We're dumb and you have to live with us.

Life's tuff.

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oblio4y ago

Multiple web browsers have embedded PDF viewers because the PDF viewing experience for most people sucked so much. That's not a product decision taken lightly.

Your personal experience does not reflect that of many other browser users, it seems. Even on mobile I dread clicking a PDF link.

kragen4y ago

But it's nowhere close to the complexity of the entire web stack, not within an order of magnitude. It's much, much simpler.

antisolOP4y ago

You still haven't addressed my question.

I'd respond to the rest of your vague and incorrect opinions, but why would I do that if you're not even going to bother to address my points despite me asking you to repeatedly?

oblio4y ago

> You still haven't addressed my question.

If I must spell it out, there you go:

We're dumb and you have to live with us.

Life's tuff.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse