Re: PS vs. PDF

[Sebastien Pierre]

I am currently interviewing people that have worked with PDF.

Here's the mail I received from BePDF's author:

<mail>
(...)
>So what would you say about the qualities PDF has and PS hasn't ?

Although I am the current developer of BePDF my knowledge about PDF is
very limited. BePDF uses xpdf for parsing and laying out a PDF 
document.
You better ask the author of xpdf (http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/).

I have only a technical reason why the PDF back end is better than the 
PS,
because PDF can contain informations that PS can not. E.g. cross 
references in
in contents table or links to other pages in the same or to other PDF 
document
or hyper links (URL).
Also the outlines (bookmarks) of a PDF document fall into this 
category.

It all comes to this point that PDF is more a superset of PS than vice 
versa.

If hyperlinks and other features of PDF (like searching and copying) 
are no requirements 
for lout, then just drop the PDF back end. (Although I think this 
should be requirements).

Ciao,
Michael
</mail>

I've written to xpdf's author, and I hope I'll get a reply soon. (You 
can object that my question was not neutral ;)

Here are some random links on pdf vs ps I've found while surfing, some 
are pro some are against PDF, but they all focus on a size/tool issue 
(which aren't real issues in my opinion):

http://www.ecse.rpi.edu/Homepages/wrf/systems/pdftest.html
http://www.gmd.de/Mail/mutex-archive-tail/0820.html
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/why-not-pdf.html
http://www.aeonix.com/DOPDF.htm

Cheers,
Sébastien.