Re: [Swftools-common] Error while converting the pdf

[Matthias Kramm]

On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 10:01:10AM -0600, Jake Hilton <address@hidden> wrote:
> Then can you elaborate on the differences between --flatten and
> poly2bitmap?.. Not sure when to use each.

Use --flatten if you can wait (pdf2swf takes longer), you need
infinite zoomability (no bitmap conversion) and smallest possible
file size, and if the file doesn't contain transparency groups 
or any other features which have no direct SWF equivalent (pdf2swf 
will output an "unsupported" warning).

Use -s poly2bitmap if you need somewhat faster conversion speed,
only need zoomability up to a certain level (specify with -s zoom),
or if the normal pdf2swf or pdf2swf --flatten complains about
unsupported features (-s poly2bitmap uses a bitmap renderer and
hence can deal with more PDF features (like multiply blended 
transparency etc.).

I do realize that the option multitude of pdf2swf is quite
confusing right now- after the next release, I plan to integrate a more
intelligent conversion behaviour, in particular switching to
different render modes automatically depending on the features
of the input file.

My typical recommendation for scripting pdf2swf conversion on
systems where conversion time isn't crucial is the following 
threefold fallback:

pdf2swf [...options...] -s breakonwarning --flatten file.pdf -o file.swf || \
    pdf2swf [...options,zoom...] -s poly2bitmap file.pdf -o file.swf || \
    pdf2swf [...options,zoom...] -s bitmap file.pdf -o file.swf

Something similar to this will probably be hardcoded into pdf2swf at
some point in the future.

Greetings

Matthias