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from the seems-pretty-black-and-white-to-me dept.
A corporate squabble over printer toner cartridges doesn't sound particularly glamorous, and the phrase "patent exhaustion" is probably already causing your eyes to glaze over. However, these otherwise boring topics are the crux of a Supreme Court case that will answer a question with far-reaching impact for all consumers: Can a company that sold you something use its patent on that product to control how you choose to use after you buy it?
The case in question is Impression Products, Inc v Lexmark International, Inc, came before the nation's highest court on Tuesday.
As with many SCOTUS disputes, Lexmark is a devil-in-the-details case that could have wide-ranging implications for basically everyone who ever buys anything — so, all of us.
Here's the background: Lexmark makes printers. Printers need toner in order to print, and Lexmark also happens to sell toner.
Then there's Impression Products, a third-party company makes and refills toner cartridges for use in printers, including Lexmark's.
Lexmark, however, doesn't want that; if you use third-party toner cartridges, that's money that Lexmark doesn't make. So it sued, which brings us to the legal chain that ended up at the Supreme Court.
Source: Consumerist
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday March 27 2017, @06:30PM (2 children)
For one, its amazing how many "official" (even governmental) PDFs are produced with fonts that are neither embedded nor universally available.
That's not a criticism of the PDF format -- it's a criticism of those producing PDFs without proper embedding. The same situation could happen with any file that specifies fonts without embedding them. If the fonts are embedded, PDFs are generally a pretty reasonable way of keeping formatting, etc.
You may have other legitimate criticisms of the PDF format, but complaining about people who don't know how to use it (and therefore don't create documents that render properly) isn't a problem with PDFs... any OS these days has pretty easy tools to generate functional PDFs cleanly and easily.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday March 27 2017, @06:54PM (1 child)
its amazing how many "official" (even governmental) PDFs are produced with fonts that are neither embedded nor universally available.
That's not a criticism of the PDF format -- it's a criticism of those producing PDFs without proper embedding. The same situation could happen with any file that specifies fonts without embedding them. If the fonts are embedded, PDFs are generally a pretty reasonable way of keeping formatting, etc. You may have other legitimate criticisms of the PDF format, but complaining about people who don't know how to use it (and therefore don't create documents that render properly) isn't a problem with PDFs... any OS these days has pretty easy tools to generate functional PDFs cleanly and easily.
A criticism of the PDF format: "The PDF format provides no guarantee that a document's fonts will be available to render the document."
That's not a criticism of the PDF format
Yes, it certainly is, even if you don't like that being the case. It points out a (minor, avoidable, but extant) problem with the PDF format.
Because of this problem, it is not only possible but surprisingly frequent to encounter 'broken' PDFs that specify but do not provide typefaces for text content.
complaining about people who don't know how to use it... isn't a problem with PDFs... any OS these days has pretty easy tools to generate functional PDFs cleanly and easily.
Your suggested solution here, that everyone in the world simultaneously decide to use PDF in a certain way so that the problem is avoided, would indeed very probably work if tried and tested.
A possible weak point in this solution is that "everyone in the world suddenly come together and do things according the quite reasonable specifications of AthanasiusKircher" part. I think you are going to have trouble with that step, however reasonable it may have sounded in the meeting.
I suspect you'd probably also encounter the need for a step 2 (go back and re-render all broken PDFs from the beginning of time to the time of implementation of step 1) to completely correct the problem mentioned in the criticism of the PDF format espoused above.
(Score: 3, Funny) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday March 27 2017, @07:51PM
Wow -- what precisely did I do to cause such animosity? I never suggested that PDF was a fantastic format (in fact, I said EXPLICITLY in my previous post that there were legitimate criticisms of it).
Yes, it certainly is, even if you don't like that being the case. It points out a (minor, avoidable, but extant) problem with the PDF format.
I have nothing invested in PDFs. But here's the thing: the problem you mention is a similar problem (if not worse) in almost all common file formats. (That was my point, if anything.) So, our choices here if we want a file format that preserved formatting are apparently: (1) use a popular existing file format in a reasonable fashion if you want to ensure rendering for ALL users (not always the only goal for files), or (2) spearhead the adoption of an alternative file format that conforms to your specs.
Your proposed solution (which seems to be to require that a file format insist on embedded typefaces) produces its own problems, namely it inhibits freedom of choice in typography, particularly if you are strict about following licensing rules on fonts. I'm not saying your solution is bad, but it creates other limitations too.
And look, I'm not defending the choice of PDF. It became standard for various historical reasons, not because it's a superior format.
A possible weak point in this solution is that "everyone in the world suddenly come together and do things according the quite reasonable specifications of AthanasiusKircher" part. I think you are going to have trouble with that step, however reasonable it may have sounded in the meeting.
Stop being a jerk. There's no reason for it.
And if you really want to go down this argumentation route, I don't know that suggesting the universal adoption of a less common file format is that much easier to accomplish than my suggestion of "just use the popular one correctly for your use case." There's no solution to this problem that doesn't require large numbers of people to do something differently from the way they are today. My solution might require a certain check-box to be checked by default in applications that produce PDFs. Yours requires a widespread shift away from an existing standard. I don't think either of these would be easy to implement universally.
Anyhow, have a nice day!