Deep PDF

 

 

Background

 

A serious issue for innovation is how to deal with legacy document formats. In the case of development of new word processors the current document intermediary format is Microsoft Word's .DOC format and Adobe's .PDF (Portable Digital Format). PDF documents are prevalent in the academic world and it is very useful that the PDF document can act as a wrapper for other data, which is what makes this new approach possible:

 

 

Proposal

 

The word processor produces a clean PDF which any PDF reader can access but also embeds the complete original document (in our case a .liquid document for Author) and an open XML version of the document inside the PDF.

 

 

Benefit

 

This way anyone can open the PDF and have basic interactions but if they use a ‘Deep PDF’ aware application they get access to richer interactions, since all the original meta is included.

 

 

Creation

 

On export from a ‘Deep PDF’-enabled application the following document will be generated:

 

  • A full and valid PDF with correct metadata (including authors name etc. as well as lists of the other two documents, below:)

 

This document will also contain these two versions of the document, compressed (.zip):

 

  • Original Format, in whatever format the use authored it in (the author will have a choice as to what metadata to include at the point of Publishing/Exporting the document).
  • Open RTF format (or XML - not yet decided) with as much rich data as possible.

 

 

Opening / Reading

 

  • When the author shares the Deep PDF with someone who only has a .PDF reader, the PDF document is shown and the two other documents ignored.
  • If someone has a Deep PDF enabled application which is the same as the application which the original author used, the original document is opened and the other two documents ignored.
  • If someone has a Deep PDF enabled application which is not the same as the application which the original author used, the Open RTF document is opened and the other two documents ignored.

 

 

Opening / Reading

 

If the user who received the document and has a Deep PDF reader chooses to edit, the app will ask if the original document should be compressed and archived inside the new document. The way this would be handled would be up to the individual application developers. This is a publication format, not a working/saving format.

 

Blog posts on this, using the earlier name of 'rich pdf' : wordpress.liquid.info/category/rich-pdf