Four pages that state what happens the moment the file is opened: which page it opens on and how much of the window that page fills, the bookmarks shown beside it, the pages two at a time, a print dialogue already filled in, and the address its relative links are read against.
None of what this document states changes a single mark on its pages. It changes what happens the moment somebody double-clicks the file: which page it opens on, how much of the window that page fills, whether the bookmarks stand beside it, and whether the pages are shown one at a time or two.
It also fills in the print dialogue in advance — which pages, whether both sides, how many copies — and gives the address the document's relative links are read against. For a handbook, a catalogue or anything that has to open the same way every time, this is the difference between a file and a document.
The same document is written twice, once in each language. Both files are shown in full, with the code coloured on the server, and can be copied in one click.
The document this example writes, ready to open.
| Before | 116,738 bytes |
|---|---|
| Now | 46,471 bytes |
| Saved | 60.2 % |
Not one mark on the page changed. See every document measured.
Thirteen slides, each stating the effect it arrives by — all twelve the standard defines — how long that effect takes and how long the slide stands before the next one comes. The file opens full screen, which is the only place a reader reads any of it.
Pages that link out of themselves and to each other.
Links and marks hung on text the engine has already placed: a band behind a line, an underline, a boxed cell — every rectangle taken from what the layout and the table report afterwards, none of it measured by hand.
Pages numbered by their labels rather than their position.
Three rules — centimetres, inches and points — on a page that states it must print at exactly the size it was drawn, and that the reader is to offer nothing else. That second request only exists from PDF 2.0 on, so the file declares 2.0 rather than changing version without you knowing.
Two sittings bound into one file. Each page carries a record of its own — what it is, whose hand wrote it, when — the photograph on the second page carries one too, and each transcription is tied to the page it transcribes rather than to the file at large. Tying an attached file to anything but the whole document only exists from PDF 2.0 on, so the file declares 2.0.