No, that’s not actually the issue. The PDF format is open.
The actual (non-)issue is that PDF is a format that is not meant to be converted or otherwise be edited. Let’s say you have a page of text with two columns. For a PDF, the concept of columns doesn’t exist. It’s just a series of individual letters placed exactly in a specific location on a page (and other graphical elements I guess, but that’s not the current point). I think strictly speaking PDFs don’t have to use the space character, since PDF doesn’t have the concept of a word, just individually placed letters.
Readers already have to do some heuristics to allow copying etc. but how are you going to convert this into a word file? How would you detect that there are text columns? What is a page header / footer and what is just fancy repeating letters?
Note that as soon as you get into more modern PDF, there’s also stuff like accessibility features (big fun!). There is support for Universal 3D.
Nobody sane would try to write a proper editor for PDF. You only write that if you want to make money off of it because a corporation somewhere doesn’t understand or control the pipeline that created a PDF that they need changed.
It isn’t crazy, Adobe has copyrighted PDFs.
They locked it down so hard. The only way to mess with it is with pirated software.
No, that’s not actually the issue. The PDF format is open.
The actual (non-)issue is that PDF is a format that is not meant to be converted or otherwise be edited. Let’s say you have a page of text with two columns. For a PDF, the concept of columns doesn’t exist. It’s just a series of individual letters placed exactly in a specific location on a page (and other graphical elements I guess, but that’s not the current point). I think strictly speaking PDFs don’t have to use the space character, since PDF doesn’t have the concept of a word, just individually placed letters.
Readers already have to do some heuristics to allow copying etc. but how are you going to convert this into a word file? How would you detect that there are text columns? What is a page header / footer and what is just fancy repeating letters?
Note that as soon as you get into more modern PDF, there’s also stuff like accessibility features (big fun!). There is support for Universal 3D.
Nobody sane would try to write a proper editor for PDF. You only write that if you want to make money off of it because a corporation somewhere doesn’t understand or control the pipeline that created a PDF that they need changed.