"I needed to open an Acrobat PDF in InDesign" A PDF is purely an export format container of the instructions for printing or viewing a page... from ANY program that creates them. There is no longer ANY structure within that file that has anything useful that InDesign (or any program) can read or open back into their native format*. It's analogous to having a complicated multi-layered Photoshop file that you then flatten down to a simple JPG and then wanting to get all that layered data back from the JPG. Ain't gonna happen. I don't quit agree with your analogy that a PDF is comparable to a JPG. A PDF (unless only containing flattened image files) contains multiple objects such as bitmaps, text objects, and vector objects. The bitmaps generally maintain colour profiles, resolution, colour space, and so on. Text remains text (unless converted to outlines, of course), with text properties intact. And all objects remain separated. Page structure also is part of that PDF. So meaningful structure *is* maintained in a PDF, and importing these into a PDF editor or directly into PhotoLine or Affinity Publisher maintains that structure. In PhotoLine (for example) each image's bit depth, resolution, image mode, and colour profile are maintained in the layer stack. Vector objects are arranged in vector layers. Vector clipping masks are maintained as well (which is useful for selections, etc). Position and scale of multiple related layout parts are kept. And so on. It requires no guessing work: everything is imported as-is, with its original visual intent intact yet still easily editable. You are correct that (for example) Affinity Publisher identifies which text parts are paragraphs and which paragraphs belong in a text frame. But isn't that actually very useful? I think it is. And yes, important parts of the original structure (styles, non-destructive layer effects, and so on -- native app functionality) are stripped from the PDF output. But that doesn't turn it into a meaningless junk pile of embedded assets. Anyway, a PDF is so much more than a flat JPG. I find it super useful and efficient to import PDF files in PhotoLine and Affinity Publisher for further editing and asset grabbing. Importing PDF files as editable files into InDesign would be quite advantageous for many users (as indicated by Affinity Publisher users, for example). At least, that is my opinion.
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