>From Jed: ... > As I recall Acrobat does have vector graphics capabilities -- for numeric > graphs and the like. Peter Hagelstein once sent me a paper in Acrobat with > graphs in that format. You could blow up the page to any size and the graphs > still looked splendid. I do not recall seeing any other papers with this. I > expect many professional journal papers are rendered in this format. Haven't > checked . . . > > I'll bet you would find it difficult to reverse this and convert an Acrobat > file into Microsoft Word preserving the vector graphics. There are several > programs to convert Acrobat back into various formats. None of them works > well, as far as I know.
Wow! You're right! I was not aware that Acrobat is capable of doing this. This is of some interest to me, and not just for personal/artistic reasons. As you say, scientific charts and graphic images seem to be well preserved particularly if they were ported over in a well-understood vectored format that can easily be parsed. As a simple test I created a PDF file which was created/exported out of a native CorelDraw file. The file contained a single page consisting of both a bit mapped image and several vectored objects. When I changed the size of the PDF page displayed on my monitor the bit mapped image was, of course, forced to be redrawn at a different resolutions with varying degrees of success. All the vectored objects, however, were faithfully redrawn in their pristine sharp edged format. Even graduated color fills were preserved even though the original colors used might have changed a bit due to what I suspect is a different internal color index table. Managing graduated color fills are a fairly complex maneuver even though Microsoft now has oodles of internal .NET library features that facilitate the manipulation of these features. No doubt Acrobat has taken advantage of some of those .NET resources. No need to re-invent the wheel. Other interesting .NET library features, insofar as graphics are concerned, include alpha channels and masking templates. Savvy writers & graphic artists can produce just about anything they might wish to conceive with just a little bit for fore planning. Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
