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How do you know for a fact? PDF has JS in the spec, and it supports SOAP and Web Services. Have a look at https://www.adobe.com/go/acrobatsdk_jsdevguide

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That's not the PDF spec is it? That is a spec for Adobe Acrobat, which is not allowed to make any web requests thanks to my application firewall (Little Snitch).

Pretty sure a PDF opened in the browser can't run any JS, but not completely sure. So you're right: I don't really know it for a fact. Poor choice of words.

The spec is ISO 32000, and it’s expensive and closed, so difficult to reference. But according to Wikipedia at least, JavaScript is normative in it. No idea if SOAP / Web Services is part of it though.

The spec for PDF 1.7 is here: https://www.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/devnet/pdf/pdfs/PD...

JavaScript is allowed, but not in PDF/A, which is what I use.

The PDF 2.0 spec is damnably not public.

But you can't easily tell PDF/A and regular PDF apart, so we're back to the same situation as HTML vs. HTML with javascript turned off.

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