PDF support is actually there with the standard image importer (at
least in 10.5 - not got access to any 10.4 systems to see if it
works), it's just... disabled? Anyway, I've used it previously - it
just needs a little hacking. To use it you need a hex editor, so it's
not for the faint hearted :) (Or maybe it's possible without, but
that's how I did it. This might be of interest to you Chris - enabling
the existing functionality will probably be easier than making it from
scratch.
To do it:
Use an image importer patch, and load any random image in. Save the
composition and quit.
Load up your PDF file in a hex editor, select everything (usually
command-A) and copy it.
Rename your .qtz file to .plist, and open it so it loads in the plist
editor.
Find your image loader patch in the plist, and find the Data element.
It currently holds the image you loaded.
Delete the data inside the brackets in the data (if I remember right,
you delete everything inside the <> brackets) and replace it with the
data copied from the pdf file.
Save, and rename back to .qtz and you're done.
A few notes: the pdf seems to be treated as an image source instead of
an image, so if you resize it, it will get redrawn rather than just
scaling. That means the image always stays nice and sharp. But it's
slow, especially with complex images - fine for loading in preview,
not fine if you want to zoom in + out smoothly.
Good luck if you decide to do it that way.
Chris Wood
On 17 Jul 2008, at 20:29, Christopher Wright wrote:
Thanks for the pointer. That works nicely with some filetypes, but
it just
stops my composition dead in its tracks when using PDFs. Is that a
known
limitation?
How did people avoid this loading issue with QC2 other than your
custom
patch? Perhaps some sort of delay, or loading into an off-screen
sprite?
Not sure if it's known or not -- we jettisoned 10.4 long ago, and
haven't really spent much time looking back :)
There weren't really any other good solutions that I recall -- you
could hard-code a delay, but that's not always reliable. You can
also drag images into the editor, and get static copies (no async
loading). This isn't helpful if you're using external images though
(or images that you don't want to bundle in).
Off-screen sprite would probably work -- you'd need some simple
logic to do the right things when it's loaded, but that shouldn't be
too difficult.
If you'd like PDF support, I could try and take a look, depending on
your timeframe. PM me and we can discuss that further. :)
--
[ christopher wright ]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://kineme.net/
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