Re: current thoughts on PDF back end

[bln]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1


Hi everyone,


On Sun, May 13, 2001 at 10:45:56AM +1100, Jeff Kingston wrote:

> Can I have people's current throughts on the need for maintaining
> a PDF back end.


It seems that I'm in a minority position here. I chose Lout over
TeX because of its small footprint and its capability to generate
PDF, which can be viewed with lightweight tools.

I make heavy use of the PDF back end to preview my documents.
Only when the document is finished do I render it into PS to be
printed.


<rant>

To view PDF documents, I need only one tool: xpdf. xpdf is a
relatively small binary which doesn't require support files.
Although X fonts don't look particularly nice, it is a very good
tool for previewing and reading PDF documents.

Look at GNU Ghostscript on the other hand. The executable is
large ( > 1M, stripped, with only a few selected drivers compiled
in) and it also needs a large support tree. (Note that ps2pdf is
nothing more than a wrapper script around GS.)


Why can't we just convert Lout's PDF output to PS with pdf2ps?
Yes, that tool exists too. In fact, you can choose to use pdf2ps:
the GS wrapper, or pdf2ps: the standalone tool. The latter is
included with (I believe) xpdf and is a small binary without need
for support files.

I say we fix the PDF back end and drop PS support completely. PS
is old-fashioned, dangerous and bloated. To turn PS into PDF, a
full-fledged PS interpreter is required. Making PS out of PDF
requires only a (relatively) simple tool.

Need graphics? Use ps2pdf to turn your EPS files into EPDF files
(if such a thing exists) and make Lout support those.

Want to print your document? Use pdf2ps to convert it. Use
Ghostscript's built-in PDF support. Use a printer which supports
PDF natively. There are plenty of options.


"So", might some of you think, "what do I care about a small
footprint? If I need more space, I'll buy a cheap new 30+ GB
drive."

Well, some of us simply don't have the resources to buy a new
drive. Also, laptops and laptop drives really don't come that
cheap yet. Then there are those silly people who believe that
"Smaller Is Better(TM)".

</rant>


In conclusion, dropping the PDF back end will greatly reduce
Lout's advantage over other document formatting systems when it
comes to size and speed.


- --
Regards,                                                        /\
=Martin=                                                        \/
                       ASCII Ribbon Campaign Against HTML Mail  /\

PGP:  FE87448B  DDF8 677C 9244 D119 4FE0  AE3A 37CF 3458 FE87 448B


From: address@hidden
To: address@hidden
Subject: Re: current thoughts on PDF back end
In-Reply-To: <address@hidden>; from address@hidden on Sun, May 13, 2001 at 
10:45:56AM +1100
PGP: S
X-S-Issue: address@hidden 2001/05/14 11:52:58 cc53dd11472690c799db2525bb1274fd
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org

iEYEARECAAYFAjr/qwAACgkQN880WP6HRIuXDQCdGzm5dp7V9Ct5iyxjLpABaCbI
6NAAn1HVtKYmFuN/Nc2an1kmsR5D0RYo
=xAVh
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----