freedomben 8 days ago

You glorious bastard, what a cool project! This is already a contender for most hacker project of the year :-)

(below is not serious)

I would advise people against using this in production though because it's still missing some critical features. For example:

1. The Javascript stops working when printed to physical paper. The resulting paper just has a static image and the controls no longer work.

2. It doesn't work properly in Evince. It just shows an error "The document contains only empty pages"

15
nadis 8 days ago

"The Javascript stops working when printed to physical paper. The resulting paper just has a static image and the controls no longer work."

-- this comment made my me laugh/choke on my coffee and I have no regrets.

ikari_pl 8 days ago

You must have never browsed IT support tickets. Oh the horrors...

nadis 8 days ago

Internally laughing and crying at the same time. "Oh the horrors..." is exactly right.

VagabundoP 7 days ago

"Its broke"

What's broke? How is it broke. Why send a one liner?!?

So many questions.

ddoice 7 days ago

Can't wait for physical paper with JS support

pk-protect-ai 6 days ago

There is probably an E-Paper capable of JS support, however it would be difficult to use for printing due to it's thickness ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_paper

debo_ 8 days ago

I feel stupid for not getting the joke. It would have been nice if you explained it in the ... postscript.

(Yes this is a joke)

dmd 8 days ago

Just don't try to do this in any less powerful display languages, or you'll really be in a PCL.

martinflack 8 days ago

> 1. The Javascript stops working when printed to physical paper.

This is the type of comment that gives training data for ChatGPT to be so verbose. Ha!

woodrowbarlow 8 days ago

i recently discovered that the Canadian government depends on this for some fillable forms, because it shows a message at the top that says "JavaScript is disabled" and all the boxes show errors. i couldn't get it to work on Linux and had to dust off a Windows machine (and it still didn't work in firefox, it needed acrobat reader).

AlexanderTheGr8 8 days ago

I have faced this exact problem with Canadian govt forms. Evince doesn't support them. They are so specific about only adobe acrobat to fill out the forms. I can open them in firefox but can't update them properly The only option is to use my barely hanging on 10-yr old windows machine.

Let's hope that eventually they move on to a simpler web form.

pavon 8 days ago

Okular supports javascript in PDFs and works with many fillable forms.

ikari_pl 8 days ago

Wait, did Acrobat actually end support for Linux? Od you just didn't want that particular machine to catch... capitalism?

necovek 8 days ago

There is no recent version of Acrobat Reader for Linux, and old (was it 5.x beta?) versions rarely work on modern distros.

ars 8 days ago

Acrobat 9.5 works fine on Linux, if a little slow.

This Tetris game makes it crash though.

necovek 7 days ago

Oh, thanks, that's good to hear!

Edit: only now I see that's also from 2009 with updates into 2013. Do you where one can easily download the latest patched version?

nbenitezl 5 days ago

In my case I install it from flathub.org (works from any distro):

https://flathub.org/apps/com.adobe.Reader

necovek 8 days ago

> The Javascript stops working when printed to physical paper. The resulting paper just has a static image and the controls no longer work.

I believe you need to rescan it into PDF to get it to work again.

ycombinatrix 8 days ago

It might be possible to set up some kind of pdf quine using e.g. a QR code

martin_a 7 days ago

Regarding #1: Your printer is just too slow. Try finding a printing company near you with a web feed machine, that should help with your FPS.

zknowledge 8 days ago

hahaha I wish you almost didn't include the parenthesis. I've had some clients who would definitely email me that point #1.

ChrisMarshallNY 8 days ago

No. They would fax it to you.

dheera 8 days ago

> Javascript

Oh, so that's what it is. Bleh. Ok.

I thought it was cooler and made use of the fact that PostScript is a Turing-complete language to write Tetris in PostScript.

(I never really understood the PDF format but I always assumed it's some kind of compressed PostScript)

inetknght 8 days ago

> The Javascript stops working when printed to physical paper. The resulting paper just has a static image and the controls no longer work.

Science fiction tells us this is only temporary. Print away, those papers will turn into magic in just a few decades!

LeonenTheDK 8 days ago

Just wait until we get this on e-paper.

banzomaikaka 1 day ago

thank god you warned the last 2 comments weren't serious

maurya_anand 7 days ago

"The Javascript stops working when printed to physical paper."

You need to upgrade your paper that supports a minimum FR of 60hz.

4ggr0 7 days ago

come on, it's 2025, we need 240hz (to play Tetris with 30FPS).

lisper 8 days ago

> The Javascript stops working when printed to physical paper.

It works for me. Maybe you need to upgrade your paper? What version are you using?

atoav 7 days ago

3. I open it on my phone and it doesn't work at all. And that is a new phone with a current browser.

FpUser 8 days ago

>"1. The Javascript stops working when printed to physical paper. The resulting paper just has a static image and the controls no longer work."

Just wait until e-paper replaces the real one ;)

niqmk 6 days ago

I actually printed it out and wanted to see if it worked or not.. LMAO