Making a PDF That's Larger Than Germany

Software developer Alex debunked the myth of a 381 km x 381 km maximum PDF size. While limitations exist in reader apps, the format itself allows for much larger documents, she found. She even created a PDF exceeding Germany's size.

with HP that will cost 1 billion in ink!

[Joe_Dragon]

with HP that will cost 1 billion in ink!

Re:

[JamesTRexx]

Way more than that.
As soon as you begin printing they'll jack up the price of ink because they know you can't stop the printjob and continue where you left off.

Pretty sure they'll raise it a hundredfold by the time you're nearly finished because you can't stand to not have that last bit printed.

Paper

[Roger W Moore]

It's the massive deforestation that will be needed to make all the paper that's going to be a bigger problem. Can Amazon actually deliver the Amazon as paper?

Re:

[ShanghaiBill]

Can Amazon actually deliver the Amazon as paper?

The tropical wood of the Amazon rainforest is not a good choice for paper manufacturing.

The best tropical wood for paper is bamboo. Bamboo has strong fibers and less lignin than most other wood. It is easy to propagate and grows fast.

But for papering over Germany, the most cost-effective method is likely pine from the forests of Scandinavia or Russia.

Re:

[dsgrntlxmply]

Add to this Abaca (Manila hemp) especially for wet strength papers (filter, teabag, envelope), Cannabis hemp, and mulberry. 19th century Oxford India paper (thin Bible paper, later also used for encyclopedias; this paper originated as "pottery tissue" for transfer printed decoration) is said to have been made at least in part from recycled nautical hemp rope. References: Carter, H., Wolvercote Mill, 1957, Oxford University Press from p. 40. Milner, R., Brittains of Cheddleton Paper Makers, 2002, Churnet Va

Re:

[Roger W Moore]

Yes, but the company is called Amazon, not Taiga.

Re:

[wakeboarder]

Normal paper is 70microns thick and an 8.5 by 11 is 2374.9mm^2, that's 166.24 mm^3 or 0.1166mL. You'd need 6.11e13 8.5x11in papers to fill germany. So you'd need about 1.016 Trillion liters of paper.

You can get ~10000 pages from a tree, so you'd need ~6.11 Billion trees. Or ~30-60 Million acres of trees. Germany is 88 Million acres, so you'd need every tree in germany.

Re: with HP that will cost 1 billion in ink!

[gnasher719]

I found a subscription for ink: For business, 700 pages per month = 25.49 pounds. Assuming A4 that is 43.695 square meters for 25.49 pounds, or 1.713 square meters for a pound, or 1.713 square kilometres for a million pound, or 1713 square kilometres for a billion.

Germany at 357,022 square kilometres will cost about 208 billion pound for HP printer ink.

Re:

[DesScorp]

Please don't try to print it.

Cue printout to begin in 3...2...1...

*German PDF runs out of room*
*Polish PDF looks at German PDF nervously*

Endless PDF

[Procyon the Evil]

"Endless PDF" as in endless paper would be really good. There is no need for pages if the document stays electronic. See web pages. If somebody would print an endless PDF, pages and headers/footers could be added automatically...

Re:

[bickerdyke]

The thing you are looking for is html and svg.

pdf purpose is to have documents printed identically on different printers. (or later "devices" in general) But if you ever tried to read a pdf ebook on different ebook-reader sizes you've seen that that won't work without reflow anyway. So it makes sense to use a format that is supposed to delegate some layout responsibility to the device - the opposite of pdf's USP.

Re: Endless PDF

[Procyon the Evil]

I know the purpose of PDF. But I still think there should be a way to create something like a PDF/A that is both an endless document and one with pages. The headers and footers could be hidden for display on a screen.

Re: Endless PDF

[Junta]

The world of HTML/CSS can accommodate just that.

You have all sorts of ability to hint about styling based on the media context (screen size, preference for light or dark mode, and paginated media versus screen).

The issue is that it is supremely unlikely to have the same content be super picky about how it would be printed out if that same content is cool with being reflowed and arbitrarily scrolled on a screen. If it is cool with reformatting for endless screen usage, then it's almost certainly fine with r

Re:

[bickerdyke]

You can optimize your pdf to support reflow - but that basically means cutting of the special pdf features and usually is better with epub (zipped html)

Re:

[tigersha]

This is pretty much what EPUB files are. A set of HTML assets packed in a single file

Re:

[OrangeTide]

Most web pages are short enough to fit inside the borders of Germany.

You can make a PostScript that has an endless number of pages, if that helps.

XKCD interactive worlds

[cruff]

Imagine exploring one like the interactive XKCD worlds.

Oblig.

[hackertourist]

381 x 381 km should be enough for anyone!

Re:

[IgnitusBoyone]

Who would ever need more then 381 x 381 km?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Germany

Re:

[davidwr]

Who would ever need more then 381 x 381 km?

Oblig. response: Advertisers: Someone out there wants to be able to display an ad that covers the Earth-facing surface of the Moon.

Re:

[TrumpShaker]

LOL, make it say: "All These Worlds Are Yours, Except EUROPA"

Re:

[Pf0tzenpfritz]

381*381km? Even Austria is bigger than that. And they're not that obstinate.

Re:

[tlhIngan]

381*381km? Even Austria is bigger than that. And they're not that obstinate.

France is the 2nd largest European country by area, after Ukraine. But France is smaller than Texas. And there are many larger places than Texas, but don't tell Texas that.

Americans don't really understand how compact European countries are until you realize you can pretty much cross one in a few hours of driving. Doing a US road trip is often a several day affair because of the distances involved.

Re:

[Un-Thesis]

Just driving across Texas takes 12 hours if you push it. Most people take 2 days, including food and rest.

Re:

[angel'o'sphere]

You can not even cross France in a few hours of driving.
Yet alone a reasonable part of Europe.

Re: Oblig.

[gnasher719]

You cannot even drive around London on the m25 in that time :-)

Re:

[angel'o'sphere]

Hehehe :D

Okular

[ArchieBunker]

For anyone who deals with pdfs like datasheets on a daily basis I can’t recommend Okular enough. It’s light years faster and more responsive than any other pdf viewer program. I wonder how it would handle these monster files?

Re:

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

Some errors were found in the document, Okular might not be able to show the content correctly

Rather annoyingly, the message fades away after 4-5 seconds.

Digital files can be arbitrarily big

[xack]

Allocate enough bits to the size struct and they double with every extra bit. Making a program that can load it without OOMing on the other hand...

Re: Digital files can be arbitrarily big

[Jeremi]

The saving grace is that no matter how big the document gets, there are still only a fixed number of pixels on the userâ(TM)s monitor. So the clever programmer will try to code his giant-PDF viewer in such a way that its memory usage is proportional to the number of pixels currently being displayed, rather than to the (potentially enormous) nominal size of the source document.

Headline buries the lede

[Happy Monkey]

He made one bigger than the universe.

Wow

[DarkOx]

I can finally have that 1:1 scale map of Germany I have always wanted!

Re:

[iggymanz]

but can we have the bigger map for the New World Order? Adolf in Planning wants to know.

Re: Wow

[gnasher719]

Do you realise how long it takes you to scroll through that map?

How big is Germany is Libraries of Congress?

[iAmWaySmarterThanYou]

I'm guessing a standard LoC unit is larger than a Germany unit.

Which leads to the follow up, how many LoC can a pdf hold?

Was this summary written by AI?

[Cinder6]

This playful exploration highlights the potential for exceeding perceived limitations in digital formats.

This is exactly the type of thing ChatGPT et al tend to say.

What I Do when I get odd-sized PDFs...

[Pathway]

"Shrink to Fit"

your mom

[Anonymous Coward]

Now try making one bigger than your mom's ass.

I read "she"

[greytree]

I read "sheI and thought "That's unusual... I wonder?..."

Yep, trans.

Re:

[serviscope_minor]

Good grief the gender obsessives are tireless. Why the fuck do you care? I have no idea if you are right or just whiny, IDGAF. be a nerd and be impressed about the PDF larger than the universe or just did us all a favor and STFU and GTFO.

Re:

[greytree]

Good grief the gender obsessives are tireless. Why the fuck do you care? I have no idea if you are woke or just whiny, IDGAF. be a nerd and be impressed about the PDF larger than the universe or just did us all a favor and STFU and GTFO and stop discrimininating against men in tech, and in all college admissions, you sexist, manhating cunts.

Legal documents

[Schoenlepel]

Perhaps this is useful for legal documents?

Sorry I don't understand the units

[UnknowingFool]

I need to know how large is this PDF in the standard unit of Libraries of Congress (LOC)

Now make a

[wakeboarder]

map of germany to scale that fit's in that same pdf

Re: Now make a

[Fons_de_spons]

Idd, Google maps in one single pdf would be nice.

1:1 scale maps

[TJHook3r]

I was trying to use a full-scale map of Germany and was really pissed off that I was limited to 32 x 32km. Now I can finally do it, 1:1 scale!

But it's not bigger than Texas!

[Tony Isaac]

Yeah, I know, this is irrelevant, but people from Texas like to brag about how big it is. Now there's one more accomplishment...bigger than this giant PDF file.

Re:

[whoever57]

people from Texas like to brag about how big it is.

Not so much since January 3, 1959.

Re:

[Tony Isaac]

LOL right!

But Alaska is all frozen tundra, that doesn't really count.

Just tested it with a 400x400km page

[hobbes75]

40km high "Hello" was well readable in most page previews, but the readers I tested could not zoom out enough in the main view.

That's All Poland's Fault

[Pf0tzenpfritz]

That's all Poland's fault. Oh, I forgot - you can't even say that anymore.

dark matter

[belmolis]

Hmm. So maybe the dark matter is in invisible pdf objects.

Units?

[chas.williams]

I have a map of the world on US Letter. The world is much bigger than that (or so they tell me, I haven't left the basement to check.)

Just wrong

[sshock]

the format itself allows for much larger documents, she found

Yes and no.

What she found was one reader that in one spot will interpret and display values that exceed the maximum mentioned in the spec for MediaBox. (But it's not like it's actually using those values elsewhere; e.g., File -> Print just shows Page 1 of 1.)

What she didn't find was any reader that supports a UserUnit larger than the 75,000 maximum allowed by Acrobat 7.0.

However, it is true that UserUnit has no limit per the spec "The range of supported values shall be implementation-dependent.".

The "my