this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2024
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268
Making a PDF that’s larger than Germany (alexwlchan.net)
submitted 9 months ago by Ninjazzon@infosec.pub to c/technology@lemmy.world
29 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Some version of this has been floating around the Internet since 2007, probably earlier. This tweet is pretty emblematic of posts about this claim: it’s stated as pure fact, with no supporting evidence or explanation. We’re meant to just accept that a single PDF can only cover about half the area of Germany, and we’re not given any reason why 381 kilometres is the magic limit.

I started wondering: has anybody made a PDF this big? How hard would it be? Can you make a PDF that’s even bigger?

A few years ago I did some silly noodling into PostScript, the precursor to PDF, and it was a lot of fun. I’ve never actually dived into the internals of PDF, and this seems like a good opportunity.

Let’s dig in.

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[–] visnae@lemmy.world 16 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Fun fact, LaTeX is actually ~~NP~~turing-complete so you can program whatever in it AND make it beautiful