The PDF Minute

Chas Emerick

A weekly 5-10 minute dive into all of the interesting, useful, terrifying and beautiful aspects of PDF documents, how they work, and how they impact and enable so much of the modern world. Hosted by someone who has been building PDF tools and workflows for over 25 years, the PDF Minute will eventually answer every question you might have had about PDF documents, and surely some you never thought to ask!

Episodes

  1. 01/30/2025

    Putting the "Portable" into documents

    When PDF was introduced in 1993, one of the most persistent problems in mainstream computing was that reliably publishing documents (either literally via printing, or simply electronically distributing them for others to view) was _hard_. There were a lot of hurdles: * Simply moving a document (whether an office document, Postscript file, or something else) from one computer to another could result in an unreadable or unpleasant display. * Printers (from consumer models up to high-end typesetters) each had their own proprietary formats and requirements. * Many document formats were tied to a single vendor, or a single operating system. One of PDF's initial design criteria and fundamental promises was to address this family of problems, so that one could distribute and use documents with any display, any operating system, and any print device, with confidence that the result would remain faithful to the author's intent. This was such a pressing, unmet concern that it gave the file type its name: the _Portable_ Document Format. Let's talk about how that portability is accomplished.

    9 min

  2. 01/14/2025

    A podcast about PDFs? In this economy?

    How do you think about PDF documents? Many people talk about PDF as "old" or "boring". These sentiments aren't _necessarily_ wrong, so why would anyone be interested in a blog or podcast about PDFs? Why talk about PDFs at all, their inner workings, history, and how PDFs affect modern society in so many ways? And why now, when so many other technologies seem more exciting, relevant, or important? Before we get started in exploring the dark forest that is PDF, this first post is meant to unpack some answers to those _whys_.

    8 min
  • 2 Episodes

About

A weekly 5-10 minute dive into all of the interesting, useful, terrifying and beautiful aspects of PDF documents, how they work, and how they impact and enable so much of the modern world. Hosted by someone who has been building PDF tools and workflows for over 25 years, the PDF Minute will eventually answer every question you might have had about PDF documents, and surely some you never thought to ask!

Information

  • Creator
    Chas Emerick
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2025
  • Episodes
    2
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    Copyright ©2024 - 2025 Chas Emerick
  • Show Website
    The PDF Minute