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| Author | PDFs and 68k Macs? (Read 11987 times) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Bolkonskij
Administrator 1024 MB  Posts: 2023 
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on: February 03, 2022, 13:40
Any recommendations for a good PDF viewer on 68k Macs? I'd like to read some (old) PDFs on my IIci, but it appears Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.0.5a requires a PowerPC. What are you using? (looking especially in the direction of @68040 but not exclusively ;-) ) |
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68040
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512 MB  Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !
Reply #1 on: February 03, 2022, 16:50
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I run the original Adobe Exchange 3.0 with patches (I also use the distiller to create my own PDF files). The catch here is that Adobe wanted to be smart about their standard and took the direct opposite approach to Oracle & Java. Whilst Larry Ellison loves to sue anyone claiming to support Java who doesn't stick to the specs 100%, Adobe allowed for a wide variety of readers and creators to (ab)use their Portable Document Format. As a result the Internet is now filled with PDF tools and files that aren't always "true PDF". That and the post 3.x format changes may cause your 68k reader to trip once in a while. Specially when you stumble upon a document that contains the framing error, where an image is embedded in text the wrong way (actually covering the text as a whole). Originally Adobe's reader tolerated that flaw in formatting and it got widespread. An update "corrected" that and from then on non-Adobe readers would still display the file nicely, while Adobe's original just showed you a bunch of black squares. As I wrote earlier Adobe never bothered to enforce compliance, so it was up to the developers to correct that flaw in their PDF engines. Some did and other didn't and few bothered to update the countless PDF files that had already been created that way. But I found I simple way to get back in the game, by utilizing Linux tools to automatically format my new PDF files back to 3.0. That works in almost all cases, and I can even read files with multimedia data embedded in them. Some day I will write a multimedia book of my own that way - oh, behold the pleasure ...  )
Last Edit: February 03, 2022, 17:01 by 68040
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cballero
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1024 MB Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever
Reply #2 on: February 04, 2022, 04:05
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As far as PDF printers, I always enjoyed Print2PDF for its simplicity, but it always gets blown-away by distiller; Adobe's PDF printer really generates far nicer PDF files, but I never knew there were even any other PDF readers outside of Adobe's own back in the day, save for all of Adobe's different products varieties!  I've always been quite surprised how well newer PDFs open in 68k Macs! I imagined that the PDF generator always had something to do with this, so thanks so much for shedding light on the technical issues with some PDFs It really shows how much Classic applications can push the envelope, I would love to use more multimedia in PDFs that plays perfectly in 68k Mac Classic PDF viewers: so please, please show us the way to get there, 68040!! 
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #3 on: February 04, 2022, 09:41
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I second that! It'd be awesome to read more about your workflow, maybe we could even pour it into an article on how to work with PDF files on 68k Macs and add it to our tutorials section. Anyway, thanks for the answer - much more detailed than I could have hoped for! I'm going to give Adobe Acrobat 3.0 (Exchange 3.0) a try and see if it'll do the job. There's no converter on 68k or PowerPC Mac that'll do the conversion to 3.0 trick?
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cballero
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1024 MB Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever
Reply #4 on: February 04, 2022, 14:34
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Quote from: Bolkonskij There's no converter on 68k or PowerPC Mac that'll do the conversion to 3.0 trick?That's what we have awesome 68k Mac programmers for, right? lol Hey, I'd even take an online server somewhere that could do the job, and be Classic Mac OS-friendly ideally, it could simply be something one could self-host in one's home network where one could upload a PDF, let the server process it and then just click to download, you know?But seriously, this is the type of next-generation programming innovations that can continue making the Classic Mac OS 'insanely great'! And the fact that I can generate beautiful PDFs from within Mac OS 7, 8 and 9 and send by email or print out is a fine example of its utility, even decades after being 'phased out'! 
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68040
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512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !
Reply #5 on: February 05, 2022, 15:10
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Suffering from old man's handicap right now. Terrible back pain and as usual, no office chair or work desk in my temporary housing unit. There should be a warning label on job adds for IT consultants: "This kind of work may be hazardous to your health" :-( When I get better I'll post a detailed instruction about how to create a ready-to-print PDF on MacOS 8.1 68k. Since I use my setup to create printable documents, I only work with that setting and disabled Print2PDF again. The later program has a nifty interface and produces nice PDF files for screen display. But print files need to fullfil *specific* demands, if you want to achive true WYSIWYG. Anything from DPI, to font embedding to color masks. Just so much: You create a PS file first and then compile the postscript document via Distiller to PDF format. And now I got to go back and yell "Ouchieee!" at the wall and curse him who determined that desk chairs and work tables are to be banned from corporate appartments. PS: No need to go online for backporting PDFs to 3.x. The tools to use for that are portable, cross-platform and GPL. Adn all it takes is one command line. I imagine one could even compile those for classic MacOS. Thankfully Adobe never made a secret out of their format specifications.
Last Edit: February 05, 2022, 15:22 by 68040
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #6 on: February 06, 2022, 07:25
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Doh, get well soon! Back pain is no fun at all and limits you. My wife had severe back pain as a result of her Covid infection (according to the doc, that's a typical symptome) and it wasn't fun at all. So I hear ya! Take your time!! Still, remember we'd all be very interested in hearing a solution. A nifty little utility that converts PDFs, docx etc. back to Mac OS standards is high on my personal wishlist. Now, where have all the shareware programmers gone ... ? ;-)
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68040
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512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !
Reply #7 on: February 06, 2022, 14:37
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Strangely enough my back pain got almost chronic right after my booster shot. Up until then it was very sporadic and usually took some bad twist on my part to appear. Now it comes and goes as it pleases and refuse to ever fully go away. :-(
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68040
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512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !
Reply #8 on: February 06, 2022, 15:57
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OK, here is a (very) short write up on PDF suppport for classic MacOS 8.1: As of v1.7 Adobe has handed the format over to ISO, thus they are no longer allowed to alter it. They may extend it, but they have to stay compatible and can't lock out the competition by changing the rules on their own (compare that to Oracle & Java or Microsoft & XPS). The last version to tbe fully supported on 68k MacOS was PDF 1.2 (Adobe Reader 3.0), which added these features to the standard: • Forms – allow users to add data to a PDF or use a PDF as an electronic form. • Unicode – use extended character sets. • Multimedia features – adding interactive page elements such as mouse events and support for additional multimedia types. • Support for the OPI 1.3 specifications • Improved color support – both the CMYK color space and spot colors can be used. • Halftone functions, as well as overprint instructions, can be embedded. When producing PDFs for posterity the gold standard is PDF/A (derived from 1.4). To quote the official specs: "PDF/A Ensures the file is appropriate for archiving and it will therefore be supported for a long time, despite changes in technology." Thankfully Adobe stayed fully backward compatible, so any original PDF engine still supports reading/displaying/printing a v1.2 file. But what to do if you want to convert a recent PDF back to vintage 1.2? Well, as long as you don't mind loosing some of that jaaz added with later versions (like digital signatures, 2-byte CID fonts or support for OPI 2.0 ...), then all you need is call ghostscript to the rescue. Convert a PDF file from a higher to a lower version: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ gs -q -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.2 -o <OutFile>.pdf <InFile>.pdf -> This converts "InFile" to PDF version 1.2. The "-q" silences all warnings (e.g. about missing fonts). INFO: PDF/A files (an archival format that embeds all fonts used in the document within the PDF file itself) can only be created by using "-dPDFA". ATTENTION: Ghostscript won't inform you about non-existent/non-supported versions, even without specifying "-q". For instance, if you use -dCompatibilityLevel=1.9 (there is no pdf v1.9) you'll get a pdf v2.0 file but ghostscript won't tell you. While -dCompatibilityLevel=. 1.0 seemes to be unsupported, versions 1.1 - 1.7 are. Version 2.0 work, too, but creates pdfs which do not conform to standard (although they display fine in -> evince). You may check the written version via: $ grep -oa '%PDF-...' <OuFile>.pdf. CAUTION: Use of option "-dPDFSETTINGS=/screen" can/will considerably degrade image quality. The quality closest to the original is obtained by not setting this parameter at all. Of course you need to have recent packages of ghostcript and pdfwrite installed and configured on your host machine for this to work. Running vintage GS on a 68k Mac won't suffice naturally, as it has no clue about the many PDF versions that have emerged since. So you'd have to compile recent Ghostscript sources for MacOS 68k, which would involve some overhead I guess, as there sure aren't any packages released anymore for age old compilers. Further info can be found here: https://www.prepressure.com/pdf/basics/version and here: https://pdf.abbyy.com/learning-center/pdf-standards/
Last Edit: February 06, 2022, 20:04 by 68040
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cballero
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1024 MB Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever
Reply #9 on: February 06, 2022, 19:55
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Whoa! Well, I know that I'm all thumbs when it comes to compiling tools in macOS or Windows (even Linux when I played with a few nice GUI distros some time back) let alone in or for Classic Mac OS  But having a 68k-compiled PDF-conversion tool would be incredibly sweet available here and other places like the MG, if such a creation would be doable, oh wow!!! I was thinking something like that on the host machine would be as much as one could hope for, unless iOS or Android versions could also be made for mobile devices and even other systems like Chrome OS
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68040
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512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !
Reply #10 on: February 06, 2022, 20:06
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The earliest I could work on that would be in April or May. So if anyone else wants to do the deed, plz go ahead and don't mind me on the sidelines.
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cballero
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1024 MB Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever
Reply #11 on: February 07, 2022, 05:53
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Thank you 68040 such digital gems won't ever go unused or unappreciated!!!We are a global Mac village after all if anyone else knows how to work the magic of compiling GS for 68k, all efforts would be priceless (but absolutely no rush nor worries on such a wonderful retro-PDF project)
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #12 on: February 14, 2022, 13:58
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Thank you very much 68040, I really need to give this a try! I pointed out the idea of compiling a 68k Ghostscript version to @Knezzen. Maybe he's interested? *looking into the direction of Sweden*
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Knezzen
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Administrator 512 MB Posts: 608 Village idiot
Reply #13 on: February 14, 2022, 19:08
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Maybe I already started working on it
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cballero
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1024 MB Posts: 1176 System 7, today and forever
Reply #14 on: February 14, 2022, 19:57
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Wow! I'm always in awe watching our amazing 68k juggernauts working their Mac magic!!!
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