Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by _coveredInBees 2099 days ago
Is everyone in such a rush to comment that they don't even bother to RTFA? A majority of the comments here are knee-jerk reactions to a headline that was misunderstood...smh.

Liquid mode is simply a tool to make it easier to consume PDF content on mobile devices. This is definitely a good thing especially since it is opt-in (you press a button to engage liquid mode in the reader).
2 comments
legitster 2099 days ago
The problem is that PDF has already had a few cycles of adding and then shedding off useless, and frankly, dangerous ideas because they keep trying fit a square peg in a round hole.
link
M4v3R 2099 days ago
Exactly, and this feature could encourage more people to use PDFs in context where they should not really be used, because of having a false sense of security that their document will somehow magically be reflowed on devices that it wasn't authored to display on.
link
_coveredInBees 2099 days ago
That may be, but it still has no real relevance to this article unless people just want any excuse to get on their soapbox to rant about Adobe/PDF without even bothering to read the article and what it is talking about.
link
samatman 2099 days ago
Yes but, as it stands, this is a change to a PDF reader, not a change to PDF.

Of course, it's Adobe's reader. So the chances that this will lead to even more mucking about with the format are pretty high.

Which hey, for me that's job security. Which is not to say I look forward to it...

But Liquid Mode, now with more machine learning, isn't those changes. It's just reader mode for PDF.

link
CyberDildonics 2099 days ago
Touch screens already make reading pdfs pretty easy, this seems like a solution in search of a problem to me.
link
munk-a 2099 days ago
Eh, I don't like 2D scrolling, it is a lot more of a pain then 1D scrolling - so I think it's a valid problem to try and resolve. That said I also think PDFs are just conceptually broken when it comes to mobile devices - you specifically don't want single format files on that device and, often times, you don't need to consume them on mobile.
link
CyberDildonics 2099 days ago
It seems to work well to me so I don't know what you mean by conceptually broken or single format files. Having a single file that you can zoom in and out on was one of the original multi-touch demos in the TED talk, years before the iphone.

I'm also not sure why they are different from anything else when it comes to 'needing to consume them on mobile'.

link
samatman 2099 days ago
I agree, my 12.9" touch screen is the best device for reading PDFs I could imagine. A ReMarkable is at least as good for black and white (I've tried it) but a lot of PDFs are full color.

PDF on a phone is unremitting pain. I'd rather muddle through on a laptop. I'll give this this a shot, it might help, and it can't hurt, since it's just a button you can push that says "make this thing legible, maybe".

link