[free_bip]

It's a huge piece for sure, but not the only one. For example, Firefox and Windows both don't support it out of the box currently. Firefox requires nightly or an extension, and on Windows you need to download support from the Microsoft store.

[zinekeller]

> on Windows you need to download support from the Microsoft store.

To be really fair, on Windows:

- H.264 is the only guaranteed (modern-ish) video codec (HEVC, VP9, AV1 is not built-in unless the device manufacturer bothered to do it)

- JPEG, GIF, and PNG are the only guaranteed (widely-used) image codecs (HEIF, AVIF, and JXL is also not built-in)

- MP3 and AAC are the only guaranteed (modern-ish) audio codecs (Opus is another module)

... and all of them are widely used when Windows 7 was released (before the modern codecs) so probably modules are now the modern Windows Method™ for codecs.

Note on pre-8 HEVC support: the codec (when not on VLC or other software bundling their own codecs) is often on that CyberLink Bluray player, not a built-in one.

[JyrkiAlakuijala]

Would PDF 2.0 (which also depends JPEG XL and Brotli) put pressure on Firefox and Windows to add more easy to use support?

[GuB-42]

Brotli? Is it still relevant now that we have Zstandard?

Zstandard is much faster in just about every benchmark, sometimes Brotli has a small edge when it comes to compression ratio, but if you go for compression ratio over speed, LZMA2 beats them both.

Both Zstandard (zstd) and LZMA2 (xz) are widely supported, I think better supported than Brotli outside of HTTP.

[JyrkiAlakuijala]

Brotli decompresses 3-5x faster than LZMA2 and is within 0.6 % of the compression density, and much better for short documents.

ZStandard decompresses ~2x faster than Brotli but is 5 % less dense in compression density, and even less dense for short documents or documents where the static dictionary can be used.

Brotli is not slow to decompress -- generally a little faster then deflate through zlib.

Last time I measured, Brotli had ~2x smaller binary size than zstd (dec+enc).

[GuB-42]

Straight from the horse's mouth!

The thing is that Brotli is clearly optimized for the web (it even has a built-in dictionary), and ZStandard is more generic, being used for tar archives and the likes, I wonder how PDF would fit in here.

[jchw]

I don't think so: JPEG 2000, as far as I know, isn't generally supported for web use in web browsers, but it is supported in PDF.

[alwillis]

> I don't think so: JPEG 2000, as far as I know, isn't generally supported for web use in web browsers, but it is supported in PDF.

Safari supported JPEG 2000 since 2010 but removed support last year [1].

[1]: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=178758

[RobotToaster]

So Firefox (or others) can't open a pdf with a embedded jpeg-2000/XL? Or does pdf.js somehow support it?

[lxgr]

Seems like it: https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js.openjpeg

This test renders correctly in Firefox, in any case: https://sources.debian.org/data/main/p/pdf2djvu/0.9.18.2-2/t...

[jchw]

Apparently I really flubbed my wording for this comment. I'm saying they do support it inside of PDF, just not elsewhere in the web platform.

[fmajid]

JPEG-XL is recommended as the preferred format for HDR content for PDFs, so it’s more likely to be encountered:

https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/10/another_chance_for_jp...

[bmicraft]

I'm not convinced HDR PDFs will be a common thing anytime soon, even without this chicken and egg problem of support

[jchw]

What I mean to say is, I believe browsers do support JPEG 2000 in PDF, just not on the web.

[Zardoz84]

the last time that I check it, I find that I need to convert to Jpeg to show the image in browsers.

[jchw]

A *PDF* with embedded JPEG 2000 data should, as far as I know, decode in modern browser PDF viewers. PDF.js and PDFium both are using OpenJPEG. But despite that, browsers don't currently support JPEG 2000 in general.

I'm saying this to explain how JPEG XL support in PDF isn't a silver bullet. Browsers already support image formats in PDF that are not supported outside of PDF.