Yesterday, we've discussed a possible incubation of PDFBox at the ASF. There are several projects that are interested in such a move. For us here in the XML Graphics project, PDFBox is interesting due to its parsing functionality. Our own PDF library doesn't have that functionality and is instead optimized for writing PDF which PDFBox isn't.
As you may know, I've implemented a FOP plug-in that allows embedding of PDF in newly generated PDF documents through XSL-FO. Using the same PDF library for both tasks would be beneficial in the long-term. Please take a look at the incubation proposal (link below) we're currently writing. I have some questions to the XML Graphics community in this context: - Should the XML Graphics PMC be the sponsoring entity? [1] - Can anyone besides me imagine investing time/resources to help with the incubation, teaching PDFBox additional tricks like we need them? - Can we imagine PDFBox becoming a subproject of XML Graphics after successful incubation? PDF is not really an XML technology but deals with graphical output. Newer technologies like XPS (Microsoft's XML paper specification) and Adobe's Mars are XML-based paged document formats. Not that they play a big role in the market, yet. [1] Makes sense if we have a strong interest in PDFBox. If it's just me, then it doesn't make sense and we're going to find a different solution. Please note: We have some functionality overlap between our PDF library and PDFBox in any case. Examples: - Writing PDF (org.apache.fop.pdf) - Parsing fonts (org.apache.fop.fonts, org.apache.batik.svggen.font.table) - Font conversion (org.apache.batik.svggen.font) - XMP metadata (org.apache.xmlgraphics.xmp) - Image loading (org.apache.fop.image, org.apache.batik.ext.awt.image.spi) BTW, the above table shows some spots where we could actually discuss better cooperation within XML Graphics, i.e. between Batik & FOP. Thoughts? Forwarded by Jeremias Maerki <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ----------------------- Original Message ----------------------- From: "Jukka Zitting" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2007 03:08:33 +0200 Subject: [DISCUSS] PDFBox proposal ---- Hi, Ben Litchfield, the author of the PDFBox library, has been working with us at the ApacheCon preparing a proposal to bring PDFBox into the Apache Incubator. See http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/PDFBoxProposal for the current draft of the proposal. Some of the details are yet to be worked out, but the general idea is there. All comments and questions are welcome! BR, Jukka Zitting --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------- Original Message Ends -------------------- Jeremias Maerki --------------------------------------------------------------------- Apache XML Graphics Project URL: http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/ To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
