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Pdf needs to have a « v2 » format that simply drops backward compatibility for everything that predates utf8, then create open converters tools to this new format.

Only support one type of font embedding, with a single encoding (make everything utf-8) : it won’t change anything noticeable regarding the file size, and will greatly help at least parsing text.

I’ve only dealt with text parsing, so that’s the only easy improvement i see, but i’m pretty sure following the same logic on graphic content should be possible.

There's PDF/A.

Thanks for the info, i've never heard of that, that's very refreshing to see that people are indeed trying to update the standard to remove the cruft.

Sidenote : It seems the PDF/A format open yet the specification is kept behind a paywall ????

Yes, DjVu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DjVu

Basic HTML5 with inline CSS and imgs written via data uri? Browsers are just as ubiquitous as pdf readers.