Posted on 08/21/2023 6:06:32 PM PDT by nickcarraway
John Warnock, who invented the PDF and co-founded Adobe Systems, has died. He was 82.
The Silicon Valley entrepreneur and computer scientist died Saturday surrounded by family, Adobe said in a statement. The company didn't give a cause of death or say where Warnock died.“John’s brilliance and innovations left an indelible mark on Adobe, the technology industry and the world,” Adobe said.
Warnock worked for Xerox before he and colleague Charles Geschke created a company around a rejected idea in 1982. Nearly a decade later, Warnock outlined an early version of the Portable Document Format, or PDF, transforming the way documents are exchanged. Originally from the Salt Lake City suburb of Holladay, Warnock described himself as an average student who later flourished in mathematics.
(Excerpt) Read more at ksbw.com ...
Rest In Peace, John.
RIP, sir.
Adobe tools benefited me greatly over the years. They really pushed the graphics industry forward. Acrobat was genius for prepress, yet also for home use.
Hat tip to one of the tech pioneers of the past fifty years
Adobe and PK ZIP are unsung heroes in the rise of the internet.
PDFs were one of the most important implementations on the web. The cool thing about them is that they can be streamed out as they’re being built and then wrapped up at the end.
At one time I had read the entire PDF spec from cover to cover and can still navigate the text versions of PDFs.
True dat.
PDF is amazingly simple and graceful in its design.
I agree!
John, thanks for the Bézier curves. They gave us infinite resolution, to what any device could produce.
Your typefaces were always the bomb.
Brilliant!
I have never seen the code underneath any Adobe product, but my experience with them says the code is likely elegant in simplicity. That does not necessarily mean the code is “short”, just, no matter how long, a lot shorter than it could have unnecssarily been.
RIP
ha! im borrowing that!
I have always hated adobe software. PDFs are a useful format, but overall, the company just seems to suck.
Adobe made computers much easier to use in the late 1980’s. PDF’s are great as well as Typekit, Photoshop and Illustrator. Wonderful programs.
“Your typefaces were always the bomb.”
Truth! Another area they brought fully into the digital realm.
I used to love the quality PS Type 1 fonts they’d bundle with each major upgrade of Illustrator. I built quite a collection just through that.
Well, it's a shame he had to die for me to find out what PDF stood for.
RIP John Warnock
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