You’re not lying to your computer. A PDF is a print. It’s just on screen instead of on paper.

Strangely, this kinda makes sense. PDF is based on PostScript, which is a file type (also by Adobe) that gets sent to printers. It's just skipping the final "send to printer" part and sends it to a file instead.

A fascinating thing (in a scary way) is that PostScript is technically a full programming language with loops, functions, logic, and a built-in font rendering and 2D graphics engine. When a document is printed using PostScript, your computer generates a script to lay out the page, that the printer runs in order to produce the document!

PDF is essentially "the safe parts" of PostScript - the same 2D graphics engine but with all the dynamic parts removed. PDFs are statically laid out when they're created, rather than having to run arbitrary code to lay them out like PostScript does.

PDF does support JavaScript code, but it's rarely used and needs to be granted permission to run. It's not a core part of the format.

For printing, PCL has somewhat taken over and it's less scary - it just has preset commands rather than allowing arbitrary code in a full programming language. PostScript is still used today for higher-end printers and print jobs though.

Because PDF is literally that, a compressed print. it is not for editing, forms or anything it is a representation of a print.

Because you are using the wrong tool. Libreoffice has a dedicated export to PDF button. Other tools do too.

File → Export PDF?

What? Libreoffice has had this one since always.

pdf is a print and typesetting format for printers. what's crazy is that we're using it for something other than that.

The entire tech stack is a tactical mess

To print, these days, you generate PostScript and fire that off to the printer.

PostScript -> PDF is a very light translation.

The biggest slight is not renaming print to Print/PDF and just shortcutting the same exact code.

I mean why would you build some PDF export stuff when this basic functionality is already available in most browsers.

I would miss the little ruse tbh. Keep my computer guessing, it's trying to know me too much lately.

Print Dat File

All modern printers save documents as a multi-paged image (read: a PDF) in their memory before printing it onto paper. It's trivial to make the print dialog save a PDF file because you're telling it to give the file it just made back to the computer instead of giving it to the printer.

Hey, if it works why fix?

i mean, yeah. turned out to be a pretty good way to make pdf conversion accessible to a lot of people and make it convenient to convert it and print it all from one spot.

you're printing it to disk. this is a trick as old as time. like piping.

I think this is more of an expression of more people printing (and it being prominent in the UI) than anything else.

If it's stupid but works it is not stupid :)

Also still the best way to record audio from anything, including MUSIC SOFTWARE to create a loop back sound device :) if it works, it works...

Just as crazy as not being able to convert PDF "properly" to docx or other format...

Tell me you don't use Pandoc without telling me you don't use Pandoc.