Re: current thoughts on PDF back end

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Monday, May 14, 2001 at 20:34:15 (+0400), Sebastien Pierre wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: current thoughts on PDF back end
>
> Maybe PDF has more future than PS...

Maybe, but if it ends up being  so then it's only because of the
marketing clout of basically one company (with support from all their
board-room friends, of course!  :-).

It would be interesting to see if the original inventors of PostScript
feel that PDFs should have a future or not....

Personally I find it almost impossible to champion any binary data
interchange format.  If you want efficient compression then pre-tune
your compression algorithm, but use it only as a fitler, not as an
integral part of the data interchange format!

> The issue that I am preoccupated with is wether PS will support Lout's 
> future improvements (which I do not know about). Personnaly I think 
> PDF,as the successor of PS, is a better platform for documents 
> especially because it is evolving towards the needs of people who 
> produce documents, and people who print them. I think PDF has metadata 
> support (like HTML's <meta ..> tags), because Google is able to 
> reference PDF documents, and PS seems not to have those features (at 
> least I've never seen google reference a PS doc).

Google could search most PS documents one heck of a lot easier than it
does PDFs.

BTW, there is no reason why PS couldn't be extended to support hypertext
and metadata.  PS' DSC are already a form of metadata.  Hypertext links
could be added to either PS or to the DSC.

> PS was designed to be a unified language for printers, PDF is designed 
> to be a unified language for describing complex documents. So maybe 
> it's better to target information systems than printers (it's the 
> semantic web ;).

I would have to question that interpretation of PDF's design goals....

Note also that PS is suitably flexible enough that one can build
real-time windowing systems with it too.

-- 
                                                        Greg A. Woods

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