From: abiword@interlinx.bc.ca
Date: Thu Feb 06 2003 - 17:59:07 EST
On Thu, Feb 06, 2003 at 02:50:10PM -0800, Dom Lachowicz wrote:
>
> Many have identified this need. It's a difficult and
> problematic problem space, and one that Adobe is very
> fierce about protecting, traditionally.
Yeah, well. Bread and butter and all that stuff.
> Well, considering my last job was www.appligent.com
> and I'm currently doing contract work for
> www.pdfsages.com, I think I know a bit about the
> topic.
My appologies. I did not mean to sound at all authoritative about
this subject as I am anything but. I guess I was just throwing out
ideas given the use of tools for PDF rendering.
> Rasterizing the PDF to a PNG, and then importing the
> PNG is *trivial*.
:-)
> Getting meaningful structured layout
> out of a PDF's contents is much much harder (i.e.
> fonts, text, images, etc...).
OK. So, I'd be happy to rasterize it then. The rasterization does
not even have to look terribly good. I am happy to print in two
passes. One to print the PDF, from say acrobat, and the second to
just "fill in the blanks" (i.e. from abiword). Abiword just has to
show me some decent semblance of the document so that I know where to
place my text.
> Sending PNGs to your
> printer sucks. PNGs of text is also a sub-optimal
> model for a word-processor to follow.
Right, but even if the wordprocessor were to print the PDF in raster
format (assuming it was rasterized at a decent enough resolution), the
text that the wordprocessor adds would not have to be rasterized, no?
> A word-processor
> is a much different beast than a "typewriter with a
> monitor" model you've used.
It is, indeed. But does it have to be? It places text on paper. I
don't mean to simplify what a word processor does, just one possible
simple function of it.
b.
-- Brian J. Murrell
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