Methinks both the paper copies and PDF were generated from decades-old data rendered as I described. That explains the multiple data layers featuring inconsistent rendering styles.
“Birthers” are making a serious mistake in applying modern technical sensibilities to what amounts to ancient technology. They don’t know how document processing worked in the past, thus they don’t understand what they’re looking at and can only explain it as “conspiratorial”. Should this ever reach court, they risk a very embarrassing & effective legal smackdown as a result. (Of course, whenever I try to explain these facts about technology past, I get lambasted as an Obama sympathizer. Emotional abuse doesn’t change the facts to fit their beliefs.)
Sorry, but this is simply babbling nonsense. The paper copies and PDF weren’t generated from decades-old data. The alleged long-form would have been a hard copy that had to be copied onto a current form. It wouldn’t be in any kind of data form. This is really a new low in fogger-styled excuses.
So you're saying the lawyers returning to Washington DC from Hawaii with the envelope containing two certified copies of the birth certificate and a cover letter from Loretta J. Fuddy, Hawaii's Secretary of Health, wherein she states: "Enclosed please find two certified copies of your original Certificate of Live Birth," is a lie and she also included a diskette with an electronic copy containing layers?
And when she said, "I have witnessed the copying of the certificate and attest to the authenticity of these copies," she really meant the document she witnessed being copied was first compiled from electronic copy and then put on a copy machine so she could witness the process? Wouldn't her language have been different if the process you describe had been used?
I'm not in any way trying to be antagonistic and have no doubt early efforts at non-paper archiving were quite different than they are today. However, the facts in evidence do not convince me of your theory.
The PDF format format was released in 1993, when the technology was still feeble but rapidly improving. But they didn't get rid of all those cool document optimization algorithms just because the computers got orders of magnitude more powerful.
If you scan a normal document to a PDF on a normal office scanner and then examine it, you will see effects quite similar to what are seen on the Obama document. In fact, even when simply viewing a multipage document you will often see the text and background paint on the screen at slightly different times.
Here's what Nathan Goulding wrote in the National Review back when the document was released and the layer controversy got started:
The PDF is composed of multiple images. That’s correct. Using a photo editor or PDF viewer of your choice, you can extract this image data, view it, hide it, etc. But these layers, as they’re being called, aren’t layers in the traditional photo-editing sense of the word. They are, quite literally, pieces of image data that have been positioned in a PDF container. They appear as text but also contain glyphs, dots, lines, boxes, squiggles, and random garbage. They’re not combined or merged in any way. Quite simply, they look like they were created programmatically, not by a human.What’s plausible is that somewhere along the way — from the scanning device to the PDF-creation software, both of which can perform OCR (optical character recognition) — these partial/pseudo-text images were created and saved. What’s not plausible is that the government spent all this time manufacturing Obama’s birth certificate only to commit the laughably rookie mistake of exporting the layers from Photoshop, or whatever photo editing software they are meant to have used. It’s likely that whoever scanned the birth certificate in Hawaii forgot to turn off the OCR setting on the scanner. Let’s leave it at that.
They don’t know how document processing worked in the past, thus they don’t understand what they’re looking at and can only explain it as “conspiratorial”. Should this ever reach court, they risk a very embarrassing & effective legal smackdown as a result.
If the question ever gets a proper court hearing, they will introduce the true original from the Hawaii DoH. More than likely, it will not differ in any material way. At that point, the game will be up. Then the Sheriff will have claim the fraud happened not via forgery but via misrepresentation in 1961 (or maybe he'll try to prove it was a DoH inside job). Good luck with that!