LLM and full rewrite are a recipe for cooking something that still has flaws but also doesn't work that well. The root cause is that PDF is an old format from a more innocent era. A new document standard that keeps up with the technical and security advances, learns about the lessons PDF taught us, and allows for easy conversion from old PDFs, would be the ideal solution.
Who am I kidding, I think the PDF format will outlive us.
LLM and full rewrite are a recipe for cooking something that still has flaws but also doesn't work that well. The root cause is that PDF is an old format from a more innocent era. A new document standard that keeps up with the technical and security advances, learns about the lessons PDF taught us, and allows for easy conversion from old PDFs, would be the ideal solution.
Who am I kidding, I think the PDF format will outlive us.
> PDF is an old format from a more innocent era
if apple parsed pdf with (js, swift, rust) none of this would be possible. the problem is memory-unsafe code.
> if apple parsed pdf with (js, swift, rust) none of this would be possible
Interpreters and compilers can have bugs. Bugs can cause memory safety issues.
A full rewrite of what? iOS? I hope you’re kidding
Apple can rewrite the media and PDF libraries in no time in Swift/Rust, they have tons of money to waste.
In no time? What are you talking about? It’d take months even with llms for it to be fully polished and tested if they started now.
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