On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 9:36 AM, John Shaver <bobjohn...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm pretty certain that they are not specific to the PDF specification (or > even part of). The only time I seem them used in online scripts is when > people are using ghostscript to process PDF files and try to pull specific > pages or information from them. > > There is no sign of them in the postscript reference manual ( > http://www.adobe.com/products/postscript/pdfs/PLRM.pdf) or here ( > http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pdf/pdf_reference.html) and searching google > for /site:adobe.com "runpdfbegin"/ returns no results. Ahh, you're right. It's actually part of the source code for the PDF interpreter. In ghostscript, the PostScript interpreter is written in C, but the PDF interpreter is written in PostScript. See the source file pdf_main.ps for the definition of runpdfbegin, for example. They do have a document describing the structure of their code base, at least at a high level: http://ghostscript.com/doc/current/Source.htm I don't know PostScript well, so I didn't dig too deeply, but it doesn't appear to be designed as a user-level API. I'd recommend looking at MuPDF if you're interested in writing programs to manipulate PDF files. Another option would be libpoppler, which derives from xpdf. --Levi /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
