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Unipage - A PDF Alternative? 375

Posted by Hemos from the uphill-battle dept.
A reader writes: "Unipage recently released a beta version of its Unipage Unifier. The Unipage encoding is a way to encode a full page with its images, CSS, Javascript, Flash, and whatnot, into just one HTML file. The 'Unipage Unifier' program instantly turns any online or local page into a 'Unipage' that can be viewed directly in a browser. It saves the mess of files when you normally save a complete web page, but maybe the bigger scoop is that now people can use 'Unipages' to send content rich documents instead of PDF. But Unipages are superior to PDF in their ability to hold functionality (Javascript), Flash animations and practically anything normally possible in a web page. Together with any program that can export into HTML you can get fully styled, dynamic, portable documents instantly. And it's free." Good luck taking down the installed base of PDF.
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Unipage - A PDF Alternative? More

Unipage - A PDF Alternative?

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  • No Mac version. Less functions than Acrobat. Lame.

    • Re:No Mac version. Less functions than Acrobat. La (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Pieroxy ( 222434 ) on Monday February 20, 2006 @12:52PM (#14761687) Homepage
      Unipages are superior to PDF in their ability to hold functionality (Javascript), Flash animations and practically anything normally possible in a web page

      Superior or different? This looks quite nice, but how can one compare this with PDF? This is just... something different.

      PDF is a "portable document format". A way to port a (static) document so that it will be viewed and printed identically everywhere.

      HTML is a way of describing documents so that they can be viewed and interacted with on a lot of platforms. It will NOT look the same on all platforms, it will NOT print well on all platforms (as a matter of fact, it will probably print very poorly on most platforms)

      Different goals, different products. Why is that everyone wants the "do-it-all" product?
      --
      Krazy Kat Online [ignatzmouse.net]

      • Re:No Mac version. Less functions than Acrobat. La (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20, 2006 @01:00PM (#14761759)
        This begs the question - if the purpose is to excape a spawn of satan software like Adobe's PDF & its viewer, why create a format that can imbed web plugins, especially ones like flash?

        If Unipage did replace PDF, we could expect a much worse time of things, when every Joe Average and business marketinghead in sundry attempts to embed Flash, Shockwave and Java into documents.
      • Because the individual components haven't all been invented yet.

      • Re:No Mac version. Less functions than Acrobat. La (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Monday February 20, 2006 @01:16PM (#14761866) Homepage
        It can not even compare. the #1 use for PDF's here is the ability for management to sign the documents and send them upwards. We can do thousands of things with PDF that this looks like it cant not be done. There is no PHP module to create these as well as a myriad of other issues making it extremely far away from even approaching the useability of PDF.

        Embedding Flash and JS is a negative as far as I am concerned. Last thing I need is a damned JS app buried in the document to try and contact a server to let the creator I opened the document.
      • Why is that everyone wants the "do-it-all" product?

        Its not that. The problem is that neither format is right for what people want out of a document format: editability and universal layout. HTML is easy to edit, but looks different depending on what you use to view it.
        PDF, on the other hand, looks the same but isn't easy to edit.

        Of course, this solution provides nothing new. You can encode images, flash files, etc. directly into the page as javascript variables that can be read by Mozilla-based browsers
        • The problem is that neither format is right for what people want out of a document format: editability and universal layout. HTML is easy to edit, but looks different depending on what you use to view it. PDF, on the other hand, looks the same but isn't easy to edit.

          PDF isn't supposed to be easily editable, and that's the point. If you're going to easy editability, a Microsoft Office format is pretty much the standard. If you're saving something in a PDF, it's to make sure the person you are sending it t
          • Microsoft Office format is pretty much the standard.

            No, it's not. Any given MS document only renders correctly with the Microsoft Office edition in which it was made, and in no other renderer does it render perfectly. Further, this rendering is not guaranteed to be the same because there is no specification. Also, you can't embed fonts in it.
            To top it off, even RTF, which Microsoft renders a spec for, isn't correctly rendered by any version of Word. So essentially there is no standard for any Microsoft document format.

            To go further, though, office documents are not easily editable! In fact, they're almost more difficult to edit than PDFs are! Its a closed-source, binary file format with lots of quirks. You're not going to be editing it with a 50KB WYSIWYG editor like you can with HTML.

            The point isn't that they're not easy to edit. The point is that they always look the same no matter how use 'em. Otherwise, Adobe wouldn't have released Acrobat (which can not only write, but also edit PDFs), would they? The only reason that they're not easy to edit is because the document format is a functional subset of PS, and that is more of a drawing format with built-in text writing than it is a document format. Its a technical limitation, not a designed feature. Acrobat would be a real cash-cow if Adobe could suddenly create a decent document writer for it that competes with Word.

            Yeah, a do-all format should be easily edited and universally standard. But sometimes the do-all product isn't the best. If I send a file in PDF, it's in PDF for a reason. If I just wanted to make sure it was readable, I'd send it as .DOC.

            I take it you're not a programmer. Or if you are, then you're a Microsoft junkie. There are PDF libraries for virtually every programming language for free or cheap. There are almost no DOC generating libraries. Even if there were, doc is not a standard as I have said.

        • PDF = "e-Paper" (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Kadin2048 ( 468275 )
          PDF is usually used as an electronic equivalent of giving someone a paper document. Just like a printout, it's not easily editable. That doesn't mean it can't be marked up or commented, stamped or signed, but you can't easily change what's written on the page.

          That's a feature, not a limitation. There are enough 'editing' formats out there -- when somebody sends something out as PDF, it's usually because they are at the stage in paper-document process where they'd normally be printing it out and handing it a

          • Re:PDF = "e-Paper" (Score:3, Interesting)

            by bugg ( 65930 ) *
            PDF is usually used as an electronic equivalent of giving someone a paper document. Just like a printout, it's not easily editable. That doesn't mean it can't be marked up or commented, stamped or signed, but you can't easily change what's written on the page.

            Don't you own a pen and white-out?

            I don't know about you, but a big chunk of the PDFs I download are forms. It'd be nice to have a OSS program around where I could open up the PDF and (gasp) fill in the form, then save it as a new PDF to do whate

    • Agreed. Upstarts like this NEED mac and linux versions more than most products do, because I feel like Mac and Linux users tend to be more willing to try products like this out.

    • Re:No Mac version. Less functions than Acrobat. La (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ucklak ( 755284 ) on Monday February 20, 2006 @01:15PM (#14761862)
      Seriously lame.

      Try getting a magazine to print a spread or ad from this.

      Sorry folks, print media requires PDF-x1 standards and that won't be going away.
      It was too long a fight to get away from INDesign/Quark specs and PDF is actually a nice format.
      With that said, why the hell would I want to look at 2 software versions of an ad to approve it when I can see the exact PDF the printer will use?

      The other thing I saw as a narrow viewpoint was this quote
      There's no need to install special software to view Unipages (as is the case with PDF)


      Isn't Windows the only OS that requires the 'special' software to view PDF's?

      Most major picks of Linux has 3 PDF viewers and Mac has Preview out of the box.
      The only thing that Mac Preview (as of Panther) doesn't do is PDF watermarking (acrobat feature only - Like permissions in corporate Office 2003).

      I think all Unipage was trying to do was get away from the PDF plugin annoyance.

      • Re:No Mac version. Less functions than Acrobat. La (Score:5, Insightful)

        by hackstraw ( 262471 ) * on Monday February 20, 2006 @02:14PM (#14762312)
        I think all Unipage was trying to do was get away from the PDF plugin annoyance.

        Just for the record, in 2006 here are things that web developers should NOT do anymore.

        Open up links in new windows, unless its for a reason. The only reason I can think of is when sites like CNN open up external links to indicate that you are leaving their domain, and they are not responsible for the external site's content or whatnot. (Its still annoying, but it has a valid reason).

        NEVER, EVER, use plugins. EVER!

        All content like PDFs and Java JAR files, should have a mime type to just download the file for offline viewing. The same with flash, or the new plugin of the week.

        Am I the only person who uses the web and downloads files? Am I the only person on the web who knows how to open up a link in a new window or tab? I find some websites just to be annoying to navigate. I can't figure out their rhyme or reason for opening up in a new window or not (sometimes it appears random), and I can't figure out to close the window to go back to the previous page or to hit the back button. Less is more.

        • Re:No Mac version. Less functions than Acrobat. La (Score:4, Informative)

          by izomiac ( 815208 ) on Monday February 20, 2006 @03:53PM (#14762936) Homepage
          Corollary: Use basic HTML for navigation menus.

          That means, no flash and if you want to use javascript then make sure that it works without it. I, for one, middle click on any links that I want to visit, then close the current tab and look at each in turn. It's a lot more convienant than hitting "Back" every page. But with flash this doesn't work (and I care far less about the links sliding in from the side when I load the page than I do about actually using them). Also, if you solely rely on a plugin for navigation, what happens when people don't have that plugin? I use BeOS as my primary OS and guess which popular browser plugins are not availible for it? (BTW, a lot of people also disable those plugins or don't have them installed.)

          With javascript use something like: href="blah.html" target="_blank" onclick="window.open(); return: false;". Don't use: href="#" onclick=... or href="javascript:window.open(). (My HTML/JS might be a bit rusty, but you get the idea.) Nothing is more annoying (or confusing the first time it happens) then middle clicking five links and opening the same page or blank pages five times.
        • The only reason I can think of is when sites like CNN open up external links to indicate that you are leaving their domain, and they are not responsible for the external site's content or whatnot. (Its still annoying, but it has a valid reason).

          No, it's not a valid reason. It's wrong. Every browser's *address bar* is good enough at indicating that you are leaving some domain, and this does it create a usability nightmare for visitors to the site.

          I know what you're saying, but I think this kind of beha

      • PDF is built into OS X... Preview is just a handy little program to display them. That means that EVERY app on OS X can easily open, view and create PDF documents. There are PDF libraries for Linux too. Windows is just caught in the stone age.
    • Wow, does that mean that it will hang my browser less than Acrobat does? Or crash less? Not just on one system, but on my home boxes, work systems, etc.

  • *Not* a PDF Killer (Score:5, Insightful)

    by XorNand ( 517466 ) * on Monday February 20, 2006 @12:39PM (#14761567)
    But Unipages are superior to PDF in their ability to hold functionality (Javascript), Flash animations and practically anything normally possible in a web page.
    Someone didn't do their homework. Javascript is used extensively in PDFs to provide interactive functionality. Does this new produce also:
    - Support vector-based documents, allowing both text and graphics to scale to any size?
    - Provide a way to cryptographicly sign a document?
    - Attempt to tackle the "portable" in PDF? Are you kidding me? It looks like a Windows-only download.
    - Support e-book DRM features?
    - etc, etc...

    Actually, nowhere on the product's website do they claim to be a "PDF killer". It just looks like an independent developer's attempt to make a cool little (beta) application. Interesting, but I'm left to wonder why I'm reading about this on the front page of Slashdot? Not to mention IE has this functionality for years [google.com].

    • Worse yet. It won't display (and print) the same on different computers. That kills the reimaning PDF usefullnes.

      I am with the author when he thinks that it would be great it people standirdize on some one-file page formats. But I can't see that happening on his format. It would be much better to just tar and gzip everything. In fact, I can't see that happening at all while MS has the bigest share of browsers out there.

      • >It won't display the same

        That's great. I like the text to wrap and fonts to scale.
        • But that's not what PDF is for. PDF exists to make documents look and print the same on all systems, and *not* to alter the formatting to match the output.
          • While that may be the design intent of PDF, it is not the typical use. End users just want to see the content, and don't care about the presentation, as long as it is *usable*. With and SVG thrown in, Unipage should be superior to PDF for most purely electronic applications. The content is more accessible, more easily editable and convertible, and more full-featured, since it incorporates applets, &c.

    • another big thing that PDFs allow that Web pages don't really do (although there were efforts in this direction) is allow embedding of fonts.

    • Re:*Not* a PDF Killer (Score:3, Interesting)

      by b1t r0t ( 216468 )
      And more importantly, it's Yet Another Damn Document Format. I'm annoyed enough that people are making DejaVu documents. (and usually their excuse is that it's 5% smaller than PDF, never mind that Acrobat Pro will let you tune the DPI and compression) When they finally came out with a Mac reader app, I tried printing a DJVU document and found that it printed at a lower resolution than what was displayed on-screen! This was just a scan of some old software documentation (late '80s) so I doubt it was just

    • Re:*Not* a PDF Killer (Score:5, Funny)

      by legirons ( 809082 ) on Monday February 20, 2006 @03:46PM (#14762893)
      You forgot some requirements:
        - must require zooming in lots of times to be readable, until the page doesn't fit on your screen
        - must support two-column text, so you read down, up/across, and down again
        - must behave differently near pagebreaks, so the scrollwheel suddenly skips 3 pages while the down-cursor stops responding
        - should ideally make your browser crash or stop responding
        - support DRM and ebook features, such as "being viewable only in a browser which displays adverts constantly", "requires connecting to the internet for no good reason", and "uses all your bandwidth downloading lists of people that it shouldn't show the book to"

      Other than that, yeah, I agree that we should ignore it on the assumption that it doesn't support vector graphics, and even if it did, PDF would be better than either it or SVG, because it's written by Adobe, and as we all know, professionals only use Adobe software, and anything free is for losers

      Sorry, couldn't resist. The pro-Adobe guys on slashdot are becoming a bit of a standing joke nowadays. Get back to your powerful, enterprise-level industry-standard bitmap editor you slackers, stop reading slashdot when you're being paid $450,000 per hour for your elite photography skills!

    • Re:*Not* a PDF Killer (Score:3, Insightful)

      by fm6 ( 162816 )
      You're right about this product not being a PDF-killer, but for the wrong reasons.

      - Support vector-based documents, allowing both text and graphics to scale to any size?
      - Provide a way to cryptographicly sign a document?
      - Support e-book DRM features?

      These features are all essential to people who use them, but they are only used in a small fraction of PDF users. Probably the biggest use is preparing prepress page images in the traditional publishing industry. Aside from that PDF is mostly used to tr

  • But Unipages are superior to PDF in their ability to hold functionality (Javascript), Flash animations and practically anything normally possible in a web page.

    Of course, had you bothered to research the subject, you'd know that PDF has supported animations and scripting with JavaScript within a document for many years now. I'm not saying the Unipage won't be useful thing. But to claim it's superior to PDF in areas where it's clearly not isn't going to help its cause. Not only that, but the two products have different goals anyway. PDF is, and I suspect will remain, the best way to send a document where the design and layout is important. It should render the same on all PDF viewers, and can contain richer formatting than can be expressed in HTML/CSS. A Unipage will probably be easier to author[1] than a complex PDF, but will only accurately preserve content, not formatting. Use whichever one is right for the task at hand. If anything, I'd say it's more of a rival to Word documents than PDFs.

    [1] In fact, I suspect that will be its major selling point. Although you can do wonderful things with PDF, most people don't because a) they don't know about them, and b) the Adobe authoring tools are expensive, and hence not widespread.

    • Re:Yet another ill informed opinion about PDF (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Jordan Catalano ( 915885 ) on Monday February 20, 2006 @12:43PM (#14761608) Homepage
      Not to mention, do you really want scripting support in a portable document format? Isn't the whole point that you're able to view the same document, on screen and printed out, across a wide range of platforms, and they'll all look identical? Dynamic content is throwing a wrench in those works.
      • Hell... relying on different implementations of CSS is going to ruin true portability.

        Still, this could be nice for those times you need to send webpage to a client that can't figure out how to unzip files properly.

      • Not to mention, do you really want scripting support in a portable document format? Isn't the whole point that you're able to view the same document, on screen and printed out, across a wide range of platforms, and they'll all look identical? Dynamic content is throwing a wrench in those works.

        I don't see why, if the semantics of the dynamic content are clearly defined. So long as the dynamic content works the same on all those different platforms, that's fine.

        As for the "on-screen and printed out" issu

      • There is nothing wrong with creating PDF files that are intended primarily for screen viewing, including dynamic contents. They are still portable, meaning they will view the same regardless of your platform (theoretically - in fact many pdf viewers do not support many of the dynamic features). You can even print them, without the dynamic contents.
    • Actually the title of the article is " Unipage - A PDF Alternative? ".

      The article then states " But Unipages are superior to PDF in their ability to hold functionality (Javascript), Flash animations and practically anything normally possible in a web page. ".

      I'm no expert on PDF functionality, but I'm pretty sure PDF's can't handle nearly the same level of JavaScript functionality as web pages running on modern browsers, I am also unaware of the PDF format currently supporting flash animation. Finally if so
    • It is even worse than this. PDF, or the portable document format, defines pretty exactly how things will be rendered given certain instructions. This means that the document will look pretty much the same no matter the device on which it is rendered. The limitiation is that the device is assumed to be in some from of print.

      HTML, OTOH, is a text markup language. It only defined certains classes and the certain relations among those classes. It does not explicitely define how things are rendered, and i

  • Nothing for you to see here. Please move along. (Score:5, Informative)

    by luder ( 923306 ) * <slashdot.lbras@net> on Monday February 20, 2006 @12:40PM (#14761570)

    Nothing really new and has nothing to do with PDF...

    In Firefox, you can use Mozilla Archive Format extension [mozilla.org], which can also save pages in Internet Explorer's MHTML format, to do the same thing.

    Besides, as it is said in Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], the reason for PDF is to render exactly the same regardless of its origin or destination and they are most appropriately used to encode the exact look of a document in a device-independent way. Unipage suffers from the common problem of webpages rendering differently in different browsers.

    • Except that MHTML isn't Internet Explorer's format, it is an RFC (2110 IIRC) that the collective monetized^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H extinguished^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H implemented.

  • HUH (Score:2)

    by andreyw ( 798182 )
    ...right. How is this good for printed material? What can this do as a LaTeX export format that PS or PDF can't, other than being more difficult to generate (in the case of LaTeX?)?

    Cause you know, not all of us use PDFs to distribute snapshots of web pages. Really.

    • Re:HUH (Score:2, Funny)

      by wplinge ( 572514 )
      If it's based on HTML it can do horrendously-ugly-maths much better than LaTeX.

      • Re:HUH (Score:5, Insightful)

        by andreyw ( 798182 ) on Monday February 20, 2006 @12:51PM (#14761685) Homepage
        Umm no. Have you ever seen the power of the math package on LaTeX? I can create horrendously complicated expressions? HTML? You probably mean Math ML - this depends on browser support, and, (you guessed it), rendering depends on the browser.

        As others pointed out - you lose the whole "looks same everywhere" aspect once you move away from DVI, PS and PDF. I mean for crying out loud - you have to put *hacks* in your CSS just to get the same page looking right between IE and Mozilla-based browsers. This isn't a solution.
    • By keeping the text at a higher level of description as with HTML or an XML schema, the structure of the document is preserved. With PDF, paragraphs are broken down into lines of text and individual characters that are plopped down at specified coordinates. This breaks the document structure.

      I would be more interested in a meta document format that also included suport for XSL-FO such as Apache FOP [apache.org]. This would provide a closer approximation of PDFs capabilities.

  • Waaaay behind (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FortKnox ( 169099 ) * on Monday February 20, 2006 @12:40PM (#14761576) Homepage Journal
    Adobe has recently released its Intelligent Document Platform [adobe.com] which gives PDFs the ability to use javascript and imbed things within their PDFs, along with the ability to use submission and make PDFs dynamic on the web.

    And considering that Adobe recently purchased Macromedia, its only a matter of time before they have flash embedded and working solidly in PDFs.

    Unipage is already waaay behind (like Hemos said, they don't have the solid installbase), and will have to come up with something extremely impressive that Adobe won't be able to copy.

    I see this as vaporware before it even comes to release 1.0.

    • Re:Waaaay behind (Score:4, Informative)

      by anothy ( 83176 ) on Monday February 20, 2006 @01:29PM (#14761975) Homepage
      I see this as vaporware before it even comes to release 1.0.
      you keep using that word. i do not think it means what you think it means.

      the point of "vaporware" is generally that it never gets to 1.0. indeed, most would say that it never hits 0.1, at least not in a form anyone ever gets to look at. the next Duke Nukem is the canonical example - people've been talking about it for years, but hardly anybody expects to ever actually see it. as long as the app is real/available and more-or-less does what it claims, it's not vaporware, no matter how useless (not, incidentally, that i'm endorsing a position that this particular app is useless; i'm reserving judgement on that).
    • PDF is definitely very established. I even print to PDF rather than paper so I can keep payment records. The one thing I would want is efficiency, PDFs are among the slowest to render document type. It is improving with the latest computers so that it really isn't noticible, but I don't plan to dump my computers any time soon.

  • Functionality (Score:5, Funny)

    by nagora ( 177841 ) on Monday February 20, 2006 @12:41PM (#14761579)
    But Unipages are superior to PDF in their ability to hold functionality (Viruses)
  • I use PDF for printable documets. HTML does not print the same regardless of computer setup, so its worthless to me for that.

    It certainly sounds cool, but not a PDF killer.

  • RFC 2557 - MHTML (Score:5, Informative)

    by NutscrapeSucks ( 446616 ) on Monday February 20, 2006 @12:42PM (#14761603)
    There's already a perfectly good standard for this -- MIME-encapsulated HTML or MHTML. It also has the advantage of being implemented in that little browser with 85% marketshare, Internet Explorer.

    The Mozilla bug for implementing this is 40873, not that voting for it seems to do any good (bug is still 'NEW' after almost 6 years).
    • Voting on Mozilla bugs never does anything. It's opium for the masses - it gives you the feeling that you can do something and make a difference, but it's really just a convenient way for the developers to channel user input into an area where it's easy to ignore.

    • Re:RFC 2557 - MHTML (Score:3, Informative)

      by porneL ( 674499 )

      Or you can use HTML and embed everything using data: URLs - RFC 2397

  • Can already do this pretty easily with Mozilla... (Score:4, Informative)

    by CTho9305 ( 264265 ) on Monday February 20, 2006 @12:44PM (#14761620) Homepage
    It's already easy to embed things into a single file with Gecko-based browsers (e.g. SeaMonkey [mozilla.org], Firefox, etc) - all you'd have to do is grab the data that makes up the various files in the page (images, swfs, etc) and use "data:" URLs. For an example of a page that already embeds some images directly into the HTML, view this page [seamonkey.at] with a Gecko-based browser. If you look at the source, you'll see some images inlined right into the HTML. I'd imagine it would not be difficult to make an extension that does what Unipage is currently doing. If all the content is hosted on the same domain, you could probably do it almost trivially in the page itself with some XMLHttpRequests to fetch the contents of images and other objects and inline them into document.innerHTML before saving it to a file.

    • It's already easy to embed things into a single file with Gecko-based browsers (e.g. SeaMonkey, Firefox, etc) - all you'd have to do is grab the data that makes up the various files in the page (images, swfs, etc) and use "data:" URLs.

      If you read the FAQ, that's exactly what this does. It's a handy little tool for using that sort of encapsulation, and little else, it seems.

      This has nothing that I can tell to do with PDF, either. Completely different target audience, completely different requirements, co

  • feature? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tverbeek ( 457094 ) on Monday February 20, 2006 @12:45PM (#14761629) Homepage
    Unipages are superior to PDF in their ability to hold functionality (Javascript),

    You say that as if it were necessarily a good thing.

  • This format does not work correctly in the most popular browser on the Internet: IE 6.

    Whether you like or hate IE 6 you can't deny it exists, it has the largest market share after all... Any Internet format that does not support it is doomed to familiar.

    Maybe in a few years from IE 7 and FF control 90% of the market but today that is not the case (not even close).
    • And even more stupid, IE6 already supports the MHTML format which:

      1) Has an RFC, that is, it's a standard.
      2) Does the *exact same* as this product.
      3) Works cross-platform, unlike this product.

  • Typical Problems (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 )
    And what happens when the person viewing the Unipage doesn't have the fonts installed that are specified in the Unipage, like because they're viewing on a different (eg. OS) platform than that used to create the Unipage? That's the original design goal of PDF ("Portable Document Format).
    • I think most here (not you) are blasting this new format unfairly. The only way I know how to save web pages in .pdf in linux and FF is to "print to file", and later convert that .ps to .pdf.

      Drawbacks to this method (pdf)?

      1. Does not store web pages completely as rendered dynamically.
      2. Some frames are left out in .pdf.
      *3. Fonts appear different and (sometimes wonky) in .pdf than the actual web page.

      Pros to uni format?

      1. Addresses flash and other embedded content currently.
      2. (hopefully, althoug

  • A more interactive version of PDF already exists in AMRITA:

    http://www.amrita-cfd.org/cgi-bin/about [amrita-cfd.org]

    which is designed to make it easier to convey scientific results to the community.
  • PDF is effectively worthless as a single page format... this is the webs domain.

    The CSS committee has attempted to tackle pagination for ages... guess what... it doesn't work... it's aweful, it'll be years before it's even close to ok.

    Let me point out that Opera, Mozilla, Netscape 4.X, Internet Explorer, etc... have supported this kind of functionality for ever... it's MIME embedding. I don't recall the exact syntax and it doesn't interest me enough to bother looking it up, but things like or (syntax is c

  • premature slashdottage (Score:3, Insightful)

    by matt me ( 850665 ) on Monday February 20, 2006 @01:03PM (#14761780)
    PDF is an open standard as is, and certainly a good one, for a start. For saving documents (paper) in a way you can be guaranteed will render the same anywhere else. RTFA, and Unipage is entirely different and in no way competing project, revelant to saving webpages as "one-file", in an .mhtml way. Is that a common problem anyway?

    But yes, even if misinformed, they aren't yet ready to take on Adobe Acrobat. from http://unipage.org/links.html [unipage.org]

    Links
    Free software for creating dynamic web pages:
    coming soon

  • Hello? This is new?? (Score:3, Informative)

    by pair-a-noyd ( 594371 ) on Monday February 20, 2006 @01:09PM (#14761828)
    KDE Konqueror --> Web Archiver

    Saves webpages with .war extentsion (actually tar files)
    I use this frequently to save pages before they vanish into nothingness,
    I also email them to friends and family and they can view them on their machines
    exactly as they originally appeared even if the original pages and or domain vaporize.

    This has been in KDE for sometime now..

  • I think that PDFs aren't quite represented accurately in this information... however...

    I think folks that try to innovate with new document formats and rich content (easily-distributable rich content, that is) should be lauded for trying to improve users' experiences. The concept sounds neat, especially if it can become as ubiquitously supported as PDF documents. I think it is fun to watch new technologies unfold - especially if they are intended to make things easier for Jane and Joe Doe.

    My questions a
  • And Unipage, from what I can tell from the article, is not. Or it is only as safe as the reader software. It supports JavaScript, Flash and all this other crap that would easily make me wary of opening any unipage document. Plus isn't this more of a .doc killer than a pdf killer? The whole point of PDF is that it's portable, which does not mean it's portable to different architectures, it means it's portable to different methods of reproduction, and will look the same on whatever media it's viewed on. While
  • Wasn't this an obvious thing to do, about 10 years ago? Wonder why it took so long.
  • If well looks like an interesting way to make "portable" html pages (something to store, mail, etc as an individual file) probably CHM is more used actually for that kind of task. Is against chm, not pdf, that they are competing.

    But found interesting the point of bandwidth theft there, as in you encode with this your web pages and will be no way to link individual images or files inside your webpages. Its true, you cant link from outside an image if is only found encoded in a bigger web page. But also the

  • I just want a reader/writer that doesn't use the same amount of memory as Premier.
  • Um, yeah. Look up Internet Explorer's "Save as mail archive."

    If you're on windows right now, you already have this functionality. The mail archives, "MHT" files can be viewed in IE or saved again as "HTML complete" and viewed in firefox, or any other browser if you want. Just MEME encoding of all the content (not flash, though).

  • Different Purposes (Score:5, Insightful)

    by coreyb ( 125522 ) <<ten.bjc.t2j> <ta> <byeroc>> on Monday February 20, 2006 @01:49PM (#14762133)
    Has everyone forgotten that the purpose of html is that the pages look different on different devices? The idea being that the information is what's important and the device should know how to best present it (given sufficient metadata). This is the exact opposite of the purpose of pdf, which looks the same no matter what. Of course some data could benefit from having part shown always the same and other parts shown according to device, and that's what this may do.
  • PDF is intended to replace postscript. You use it to save a document exactly as it would appear printed.

    IE can already save a web page as a single file. It makes pretty good use of existing standards, mime encoding the page like an email with image attachments.

  • Unnecessary? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Schraegstrichpunkt ( 931443 ) * on Monday February 20, 2006 @08:25PM (#14764448) Homepage
    From the site: Unipage is a way to store a complete web page as just one file.

    ZIP FILES are a way to store a complete web page as just one file!

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