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Tell HN: Adobe took down the PDF 1.7 specification from their site

by steerablesafe on 3/31/22, 10:43 AM with 36 comments

I just discovered that Adobe took down the PDF 1.7 specification from their site. It's used to be hosted at [1] and I can't find a replacement. Of course this doesn't mean that the specification can't be acquired freely from elsewhere [2, 3], but it's unfortunate if the authoritative source is down. Hopefully it is a mistake though and it will be back up.

[1] http://www.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/devnet/pdf/pdfs/PDF32000_2008.pdf

[2] https://christianhaider.de/dokuwiki/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=pdf:pdf32000_2008.pdf

[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20220309040754if_/https://www.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/devnet/pdf/pdfs/PDF32000_2008.pdf

by darrenf on 3/31/22, 1:46 PM
It's still available at this Adobe URL: https://opensource.adobe.com/dc-acrobat-sdk-docs/standards/p... "As distributed by Adobe after adoption as ISO 32000-1:2008, with permission of ISO." [0]
Not to mention ISO unsurprisingly host it, which I would also consider authoritative: https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:32000:-1:ed-1:v1:en
[0] https://www.loc.gov/preservation/digital/formats/fdd/fdd0002...
by iceblockderby on 3/31/22, 3:09 PM
The ISO released the 2.0 version of the specification that replaces the 1.7 standard.
"Although it is an open standard, one major difference compared with prior versions of PDF is that ISO now holds the copyright to the PDF specification and thus PDF 2.0 is not freely downloadable." [0]
It looks like DMCA requests are being issued to anyone that hosted the old specification, even open source projects [1].
[0] https://www.pdfa.org/resource/iso-32000-pdf/ [1] https://github.com/Hopding/pdf-lib#git-history-rewrite
by dorianmariefr on 3/31/22, 1:28 PM
> This page was updated on 23 March 2022 as many direct links to legacy PDF specifications on adobe.com were broken. Many links now reference the Wayback Machine internet archive and thus may be slow.
https://www.pdfa.org/resource/pdf-specification-index/
by colejohnson66 on 3/31/22, 1:25 PM
It's possible they're reworking their CMS and that causes files to be moved (breaking links everywhere). Microsoft loves doing that with their developer blogs.
by jeffreportmill1 on 3/31/22, 1:34 PM
Off topic, but man is that document hard to use as a reference. Ironically, I wish they would publish it as HTML broken down by chapter and section.
(I have used that document a lot to write a custom PDF generator and parser in Java, using a downloaded copy)
by andrewmcwatters on 3/31/22, 4:28 PM
Maybe one of the side effects of this is that people only continue writing against PDF 1.7.
by hulitu on 3/31/22, 1:13 PM
Maybe they want to sell it :)