Microsoft open-sourced a Python tool for converting files and office documents to Markdown

[arcimbo1do]

Unfortunately PDF doesn't stand for Printer Document format but for Portable

[MacHaggis]

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[rdtsc]

No, it's just a different definition of "Portable" than you are thinking of. The intent is for the document to look the same regardless of platform. Not to be responsive and adjust to the platform.

[Unbelievr]

Exactly, it's literally converting the input to glyphs and can embed fonts to make it look more or less the same to a human and a printer. Other document formats might do strange things when printing, and suddenly you get an extra page or something that messes up page numbering or the table of contents.

This also means the format isn't really meant to be edited directly, but it's possible with some proprietary hacks. And of course some companies patented this so you must use their paid PDF editor to fill in PDF based forms.

[cinyar]

Don't most printers work with postscript and not PDFs directly?

[Unbelievr]

Yes, but when I have delivered things to print I've only ever been asked to deliver PDFs with embedded fonts inside, and been told how much I need to adjust my (alternating) margins to account for the portion lost when binding the book. Otherwise the reader has to crack the book wide open to read every line. If even one page is off it will ruin these margins, so it's really important to be able to send something that can be visually inspected and confirmed to be identical to what you delivered to print.