On Mon, May 13, 2024 at 03:27:16AM -0400, ibrahim via 9fans wrote:
> > For the ghostscript thing, and for the record (noting that, in this
> > area, I have put my code-money where my mouth is):
> >
> > I too want to get rid of Ghostscript. The path adopted is the
> > TeX/METAFONT way with the following:
> >
> > - A PostScript interpreter can be, functionnally, divided in two
> > parts: 1) a general purpose language allowing computation but aimed
> > for images and supposed, finally, to produce primitive graphics
> > directives (fixed results); 2) a rasterizer to produce a matricial
> > image;
>
> Converting pdf and ps to svg and rendering svg is the simpler approach.
> During the first time I used this method I just added a linux computer to my
> network and made use of pdftocairo with svg export. The advantage of this
> method is that the resulting container kept page information and also all
> glyphs are embedded in the resulting svg file which than gets rendered by a
> tiny svg renderer.
>
> Substituting ghostscript with a new interpreter wasn't worth the effort in my
> case. By reading the pdf metadata you also can keep the outline and other
> information.
I don't want to depend on anything. Your method is just adding other
dependencies to ghostscript if you start with ps, and other
dependencies, if not ghostscript, including C++ code that is inability
to port on Plan9, if you use pdf.
There was a TeX engine called pdfTeX, that replaced DVI with PDF. The
end result was that they depended on an external PDF library that they
have to adapt and, soon, they simply drop the updates and froze the
version they used because they were unable to follow the
evolution of this external code they depended upon.
Furthermore, if you are very careful about licenses, the more you add
dependencies, the more you have to be careful. PDF doesn't protect for
some claim, some day, from a lawyers' gang, pretending that PDF files
contain the result of some infringement of some patent---it is
notorious that the crazy US system of patents have led some big
enterprises to have a huge patents portfolio, some patents being real
ones, and some being crap, but just in order to frighten opponents:
"don't try to play this game with me, or I will be able to demonstrate
that you are using a number of my patents, and I will sue you to
death."
Problem: what will become of these portfolios if the big enterprise is
declining and is bought by financial sharks?
Furthermore, having the obligation to add a Linux system to render a
man page is not exactly simplification. Is it? ;-)
--
Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ kergis +dot+ com>
http://www.kergis.com/
http://kertex.kergis.com/
http://nunc-et-hic.fr/
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