Agreed! I remember back in the day when they first created the docx format. Such bloated garbage. I think an empty file was like 100-200 KB. And PowerPoint files are unreasonably huge too

The best part is Word for example now by default just outputs a PDF file if you tell it to export an XPS file, which gets extra funny if you have a licensed version of Acrobat installed because Acrobat installs an extension to also export as a PDF except it works worse!

Print Deeznuts Fuckyou

Reminds me of Arnold's guide to tar:

Potable Document Format. Retains formatting and safe to consume.

Next time someone asks me what PDF stands for, this is what I will tell them

(I'm reflecting on how many times I've been asked what PDF stands for, because my comment would suggest it is a thing that happens often.

Doofensmirtz_meme.jpeg: "if I had a nickel for every time someone asked me what PDF stood for, I'd have two nickels. — which isn't much, but it's weird that it happened twice"

I think I'm just most people's token techy friend. Or more specifically, I'm the techy friend who also knows loads of random shit and really enjoys answering random questions)

Enhance. Enhance. Enhance...

It was like that back in the eighties, until the manufacturers decided to save on the chips by moving functionality into the drivers. Which was basically the start of everyone's problems with printers.

Im not so sure. I bet more than half of the drivers out there produce PCL output, and there are a lot of printers that use other languages too like ZPL and a myriad of others.

Apple‘s AirPrint standard for wireless printing is pretty much sending a PDF over IPP.

Right, as another user said, it's similar to postscript but with bells and whistles.

Heh, we were doing some cosigner banking and I asks my one adult kid to send me the bank documents needed (they were pdf files on their computer). They sent me low res screen shots. Lol

Someone else pointed out that printing to pdf was a universal solution no matter the program. Instead of each program having to make their own export option.

I'm going to assume you're on the younger side. That's a relatively recent thing. For many many years we had to install PDF printers.

Also the PDF printer is generic, but the export has to implemented for each application individually.

Well, but we're not just talking about Office. What about browsers, document viewers, etc.

oop probably meant from websites

Not how printing as pdf works but I appreciate the effort

I haven’t looked at the printer driver interface on various different operating systens, but I imagine programmatically you don’t write ACSII text directly to it, the way you would with file io calls. Though on Linux you have “lpr” where you can pipe text directly to the command. It’s possible a printer could natively support this, but clearly it would be a different interface to render anything more complex than ascii text.

Really want to migrate, but LyX is too good to give up...

Typst is great stuff

Dude, LaTeX one of the worst piece of software that is still prevalent today, perhaps the only thing worst is Microsoft Word (and similar WYSIWYG thingy).

One time nothing really worked I used a pikepdf python lib. Open file -> Guess pass -> Resave. I was surprised it's that simple.

The application (or browser functionality) showing you the PDF should offer a button for that. However, the website might customize or replace that application to prevent it to give you a download button.

But, those functionalities (PDF viewing) are mostly in the client, so you need the PDF file locally anyway, so you might find it in the Network tab in the web developer tools (F12).

And the people who can't open them

Having worked at a bank, everything is PDF files. All the billions of dollars in loans, assets, and accounts etc. it's all PDF files of agreements and terms. The entire finance industry would be heavily destabilized if the industry somehow rug pulled them on PDFs

Back when they were cool

Is that a JE reference?