1. ➶ Tom Morris: Unprintable PDFs won't save the planet

    Amazing Wikipedia find from Tom Morris: the “WWF” file format.

    It’s a file format designed by the World Wide Fund for Nature (what used to be the World Wildlife Fund) as an environmentally-conscious document format.

    Wha—? An environmentally-conscious document format? That’s an object and a property that you don’t see going together if you are sane. It makes about as much sense as saying your yoghurt is low voltage or your toothpaste is skintight.

    An environmentally-conscious document is one that actively prevents you from printing it. It turns out a .WWF file is just a PDF file with “don’t print” security flag toggle on.

    Of course, if you choose to use a non-Adobe PDF reader such as GhostScript (which ignores the ‘Don’t Print’ security flag) it’ll print just fine.

    Posted on Monday January 3rd, 2011