Comment on Save as PDF
rainwall@piefed.social 9 hours agoThis is as much linguistic tomfoolery for humans as it is a con for computers.
I dont know the history, but the most likely case is some microsoft engineer implemented the “print as pdf” option to get around an adobe restriction in the far past, and now we have this weird convention where you “print” to only 1 filetype to “save” it.
someguy3@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Someone else pointed out that printing to pdf was a universal solution no matter the program. Instead of each program having to make their own export option.
rainwall@piefed.social 5 hours ago
Thats not 100% correct. This didnt use to be an option, nor is pdf the default printing “format” used by printers. Thats more PCL.
someguy3@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
What? I’m saying it was added because it was independent of the program. You could print to pdf from anywhere be it word, or notepad, or tax software, or a browser, or whatever shitty proprietary program you had. Instead of waiting for each of those programs to add an export as PDF option. I have no idea what you misinterpreted that into.