PDF

PDF can refer to one of two things, for /tg/ purposes:

• The Planetary Defence Force, the speedbump used to delay the enemy until the Imperial Guard can arrive.
  • There is also the Star Wars flavoured Planetary Defense Force.
  • The term is somewhat generic in science fiction along with Earth Defense Force, but other spins on the acronym for similar styled armies also exist, like Grimdark Future's Human Defense Force.
• A file format designed for printing out exactly what the author intended via computer, widely used nowadays for distributing books online, both legitimate and piracy. There's some history and technical arglebargle about the file format that can be found at Wikipedia.
  • /tg/ is one of token few boards on 4chan that also allows for uploading PDFs in place of an image, especially useful for sharing rules, artbooks, and homebrew - though still hamstrung by the same upload limitations that have gone unchanged for years. This would bite 4chan in the ass during the April 2025 hack, as the hacker responsible claimed that the website did not properly check and validate if a file was actually a PDF (also confirmed by the 4chan dev blog afterwards), allowing the hacker to run malicious code by uploading a PostScript file that used exploits in the website's outdated-by-13-years version of GhostScript to gain shell access, fucking with the entire website until the plug got pulled. Since then, PDF support has been pulled entirely - with no word on it coming back.
  • May also be used as slang for pedophilia (since "PDF file" sounds similar to Pedophile) to get around filters.