The context that this article misses is that PDF is a <i>huge</i> spec. It is much bigger than you think it is. Adobe maintains the reference implementation. How many image formats do they have to maintain? How many compression schemes?<p>It is not as if Adobe can simply set a new code standard and fix all that old code instantly.<p>Adobe's legacy code problem with PDF's is worse than Microsoft's; Adobe has to maintain some of this gross old stuff for all time.