Re: [tdf-discuss] Better PDF import?

On Sun, Jun 22, 2014 at 6:42 AM, Mateusz Zasuwik <mzasuwik@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2014-06-21 11:22 GMT+02:00 Italo Vignoli <italo.vignoli@gmail.com>:
>
> Why is it right behavior? Bigger part of documents floating around in
> Internet are documents crated in text editor.

Most documents on the Internet (or that I've been sent) have been
created in a word processor (usually MS-Word). Frustratingly, most of
these docs don't need any markup, and *should've* been created in a
text editor, but that's a user-education topic for another time... :-)

> Later in the queue we
> have presentations
> or spreadsheets. The likelihood that user will need open "PDF-ed text
> document" is incomparably greater than anything else and in spite of it,
> these documents are opened in "picture module".

I'm certainly not the prototypical office worker, but I can only
remember a handful of times I've had to open a PDF for editing
purposes. Documents that should be edited should be sent in editable
formats.

Using LibreOffice as a PDF-editor is a neat trick -- in fact, it's
something I highlighted in my talk at Texas Linux Fest a week ago[1]
-- but while I encourage the improvement of our PDF import
capabilities, I'm reticent to go so far as to describe PDF as a
first-class editable format on the same order as ODT, DOC, DOCX, etc.

> > Have you ever used MS Office 2013 to open a PDF? It sucks at least as
> > much as any other software.
>
> I did and it worked much better than LibreOffice does. There is no
> faultless software but in this case, LibreOffice just sucks more than MS
> Office.

Perhaps we should look into the use cases for editing PDFs and try a
multi-pronged approach:
1) Above all else, promote education so that people choose the right
format for the job (including editable formats such as TXT, ODT,
DOC(X), and Hybrid-PDF).
2) Collect a set of (permissively-licensed) PDFs that demonstrate
reduced fidelity when opened in LibreOffice (so that we can improve
our import support)
3) Determine what aspects of PDF markup present the most problems for
LibreOffice (C* fonts? Tables?) and make those into useful targets.


Cheers,
--R


[1] http://texaslinuxfest.org/content/libreoffice-tools-and-tricks-making-your-work-easier

-- 
Robinson Tryon
LibreOffice Community Outreach Herald
Senior QA Bug Wrangler
The Document Foundation
qubit@libreoffice.org

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