Re: current thoughts on PDF back end

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Monday, May 14, 2001 at 11:58:42 (+0200), address@hidden wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: current thoughts on PDF back end
>
> I say we fix the PDF back end and drop PS support completely. PS
> is old-fashioned, dangerous and bloated. To turn PS into PDF, a
> full-fledged PS interpreter is required. Making PS out of PDF
> requires only a (relatively) simple tool.

I and my various PostScript printers and other PS tools might be
dinosaurs of a sort, but I sure as heck would rather have PS than PDF
for my page description language.  There are, in my estimation anyway,
infinitely more tools to manipulate PS files.

While someone mentioned that xpdf has a "small" footprint, it's
practially useless for anything but previewing.  Any actual manipulation
of PDFs requires tools far more enormous and power hungry than any pure
PostScript interpreter I've ever seen (GS bloated enormously as it grew
to learn how to read PDFs, Acrobat is a horrid monster!).

One thing I do know for certain though is that even with both GS and
Acrobat there are times when it is impossible to print some PDF
documents on a PostScript printer, at least in any way that looks half
decent and like the author intended it.  That happens with PS documents
too, of course, but at least with most of them I can go in with a text
editor and fix the code.

In fact if I had my way I'd outlaw PDFs and just make everyone use
gzipped or bzipped PS files.

-- 
                                                        Greg A. Woods

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