Adobe To Release Full PDF Specification to ISO

nickull writes "Adobe announced it will release the entire PDF specification (current version 1.7 ) to the International Standards Organization (ISO) via AIIM. PDF has reached a point in its maturity cycle where maintaining it in an open standards manner is the next logical step in evolution. Not only does this reinforce Adobe's commitment to open standards (see also my earlier blog on the release of flash runtime code to the Tamarin open source project at Sourceforge), but it demonstrates that open standards and open source strategies are really becoming a mainstream concept in the software industry. So what does this really mean? Most people know that PDF is already a standard so why do this now? This event is very subtle yet very significant. PDF will go from being an open standard/specification and de facto standard to a full blown de jure standard. The difference will not affect implementers much given PDF has been a published open standard for years. There are some important distinctions however. First — others will have a clearly documented process for contributing to the future of the PDF specification. That process also clearly documents the path for others to contribute their own Intellectual property for consideration in future versions of the standard. Perhaps Adobe could have set up some open standards process within the company but this would be merely duplicating the open standards process, which we felt was the proper home for PDF. Second, it helps cement the full PDF specification as the umbrella specification for all the other PDF standards under the ISO umbrella such as PDF/A, PDF/X and PDF/E. The move also helps realize the dreams of a fully open web as the web evolves (what some are calling Web 2.0), built upon truly open standards, technologies and protocols."

Great news, but not necessarily a free-for-all

[The Empiricist]

It is wonderful to hear that the PDF specification will be the subject of open standardization. Caution should be exercised when implementing products though. Almost 400 patents have been granted to Adobe [uspto.gov]. Adobe has another 50 patent applications [uspto.gov] in process. There may also be additional patents that have been assigned to Adobe or that Adobe has an exclusive license to practice. Adobe may also have intellectual property in foreign markets that are greater in scope than what Adobe has in the United States.

Caution should be exercised because ISO does not require that its standards be patent-free. Necessary patents merely must be available on a reasonable and non-discriminatory [iso.org] basis. Adobe (or anyone else really) may also seek patents on how PDFs are used, manipulated, etc.

This doesn't necessarily mean that Adobe is bad or that any Open Source Software projects will ever face any obstacles from Adobe. It simply means that some care should be taken to determine whether any of Adobe's patents cover features of the PDF standard or its uses, especially when developing software that mimics an existing proprietary product. If there is a question, then OSS developers should contact Adobe to try to get a license (perhaps for the consideration of a promise that the resulting product remain open source).

Re:Oh dear God.

[penix1]

I like plain text or html files much better, they are far more efficient, reliable and compatible.

Plain text and HTML are far from "compatible". You lose formatting, layout, and readibility not to mention that those formats don't print very well. Another thing that you lose is the permanence of it. I can scan a signed document into PDF and be assured it will stay the same. The only wat to achieve that is to use HTML (a 50% reduction in your choices right off the bat) and scan it as an image.

B.

Adobe employee responds to some raised questions

[Jugalator]

FYI, an Adobe employee responded to some questions about this and especially how it relates to Microsoft's new XPS format here [neowin.net]. (Nickull's reply should be at the top of that page)

Re:ISO approved PDF

[Nyph2]

You know holding shift while loading acrobat reader skips the loading of plugins & speeds up load time significantly on at least some versions. So depending on the version you're using, this may cut the loadtime enormously.
http://www.microsystems.com/tipstricksdisplay.php? tipNo=007/ [microsystems.com]

Re:ISO approved PDF

[I'm Don Giovanni]

I would hope not.
First, Microsoft already announced that they are submitting XPS to ISO/ECMA. Adobe's announcement is a reaction to that.

Second, XPS has more features than PDF, creates smaller file sizes, and is more easily manipulatable (that is, to make a program that manipulates XPS, you just take any XML parser and add the XPS semantics).

Plus, Adobe reserves that right to sue anyone that uses PDF. They used legal threats to force Microsoft to remove PDF support from Office 2007 (out of the box; MS still provides a free PDF plugin for download). And that was wrt the current ISO PDF standard (PDF 1.4 I think), so simply being an ISO standard doesn't mean that Adobe won't sue anyone that uses it at their whim, for whatever reason they see fit.

MS has covenant not to sue anyone that uses XPS (covenant not to sue is standard MS practice for the standards they release to ISO, ECMA, etc).

Re:ISO approved PDF

[morcheeba]

This post is about .pdfs, please bear with me!

Have you seen the Apple clock widget? [apple.com] I was poking around the code trying to find out why showing the clock took 10% of the CPU time, and I found the root of the problem: the second hand is redrawn about 10 times every time it moves. This simulates a little vibration, as you would have on a mechanical clock. I cut the code out to make it redraw only once, and the cpu time was negligible again.

When I looked at the code, I saw something amazing: the clock hands were stored as .pdf files! Three pdf files, one for each hand. Amazing... apple felt that pdf was lightweight enough for general-purpose vector graphics.
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anyway, I miss carrboro - you've got a great shop there!