On Tue, Sep 05, 2000 at 12:53:16PM +1100, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> > Michael Lake wrote:
> >
> > Very different experience here with PDF. I have a colleauge
> > (must get a dict on this Linux box) who sends stuff to me
> > with PDF and he is still trying to get the fonts right.
> > Views fine on is machine but my machine does not have the
> > fonts and his Word Perfect will not embed the fonts in the
> > PDF as they are licenced.
>
> That's a fault on Word Perfect's part, rather than PDF. Fonts are fairly
> well-protected in PDFs, especially if you embed subsets, so it sounds like
> Word Perfect is being silly.
>
> I use PDFs almost exclusively for print-publishing work, and couldn't do
> without them...
heh, one of those pdf's you sent me (for the "LILO" installfest
shirts) didn't print the fonts correctly. i had to convert it to
postscript (using unix tools) and then print that.
fonts are a *big* problem in pdf. primarily because:
1. acrobat reader renders bitmapped fonts exceptionally badly. xpdf
does a much better job.
2. the pdf spec says to prefer system fonts to embedded fonts, if
they have the same name. duh. pdftex (for example) actually generates
random font names to get around this.
> Seeing that his WP doesn't implement it too nicely, he
> should probably get Adobe Acrobat for the Distiller. Then he can just 'print
> to PDF'.
from all reports, distiller sometimes generates files that acroread
(etc) can't read. pdftex is a more portable alternative, since mike is
of course using LaTeX (pdftex doesn't try to be too tricky, so the
files tend to work everywhere - careful of bitmap fonts tho).
> > Views and prints shitty.
acroread and bitmap fonts again.
most pdf viewers suck a fair amount too.
> > Next I need to extract text from
> > the PDF to get that info up onto a web site. No luck -
> > strings a PDF and you can't get the text. Its compressed.
> > Can't cut and paste from screen either.
the text is actually in there (at least grouped by word). i wouldn't
want to attempt to extract it tho..
> > I can't use the marvellous psutils to repaginate it, resize
> > it, turn it to ASCII etc.
pdftops
the one that comes with xpdf. not pdf2ps (comes with gs). pdf2ps has
big troubles with images (in my experience)
> PDF4 is going to solve some of those problems, but for the most part it's a
> lack of tools. PostScript has been around for much longer than PDF.
.. and java is going to work real soon now too
the pdf spec is vague and most of the features are just plain
silly. the spec leaves huge amounts up to the "viewer" and that market
is dominated by a single implementation, so its always going to be a
matter of "we only support acroread".
> > Why didn't Adobe just add gz compression, encryption and
> > string searching to the PS standard?
>
> Because PDF solves many other problems, and... well... They had to sell
> something! ;)
postscript is a full printer control language. pdf is more of a
description language - its actually quite a bit simpler (apparently).
pdf's can also do some scary stuff, like embedding movies, interactive
forms (with submit buttons, etc), javascript (!), heirarchical
"threading" of pages, and lots of other useless stuff. its basically a
whole web site in a single file. of course, just like web sites, you
can only use the lowest common denominator if you want to be at all
portable.
--
- Gus
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