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!!Con 2020 - Playing Breakout… inside a PDF!! by Omar Rizwan

!!ConCited 3× on HN, 2021–2024
YouTube
talk · general · evergreen · 2021–2024 on HN

Omar Rizwan's short !!Con talk about writing a Breakout game in JavaScript that runs inside a PDF. It explores the surprisingly large PDF specification, including its scripting support.

Cited as the fun, surprising example of how much a PDF can do, and the talk behind the Horrifying PDF Experiments repo.

3 comments from Hacker News

@mdaniel2024-06 · in “Horrifying PDF Experiments”

the repo's < link > readme points to the talk given on this: ▶ this video the 2021 submission of the repo got some lively commentary link

@jeroenhd2023-03 · in “TinyVG – an alternative binary encoded vector graphics format”

Support will vary by viewer, but Chrome's built-in PDF viewer supports a subset of Javascript. It's enough to play Breakout inside a PDF: ▶ this video

@vanderZwan2021-04 · in “Firefox 88.0”

> PDF forms now support JavaScript embedded in PDF files. Some PDF forms use JavaScript for validation and other interactive features. As far as I can tell I still can't play breakout in a PDF in Firefox though (and I think that's for the better) [0] link [1] ▶ this video