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Re: PDF
From: |
Darrin Smart |
Subject: |
Re: PDF |
Date: |
Tue, 02 Dec 1997 11:49:09 +1100 |
Valeriy E. Ushakov wrote:
>
> And a rudimentary PDF backend without all the bells and whistles can
> share a lot of code with PS backend. I think 99.9% of engine code can
> be shared as the imaging model is the same, the differences are in the
> output format.
>
It would be a little more complex than this. A lot of the PostScript
specifics are actually in the package definitions. You also need to grep
for @BackEnd in these. And actual postscript functions are defined in
some of these too. In addition, if PDF is a binary format it could be
rather difficult to write packages to output them.
I discovered all this writing a backend for OpenPage last year
(http://www.research.canon.com.au/openpage/).
An alternative might be to use the current PS output and use a PS-PDF
converter (Ghostscript?). If someone was to write/patch lout it might be
possible to embed xref-type information in comments and have the
converter understand them.
Or you could write a XML-based specification for the backend which used
a declaritive drawing model rather than a programming language which
would make writing filters to various formats easier.
- Darrin
- PDF, P.J. Kersten, 1997/12/01
- Re: PDF, Valeriy E. Ushakov, 1997/12/01
- Re: PDF,
Darrin Smart <=
- Re: PDF, Valeriy E. Ushakov, 1997/12/02