[Texmacs-dev] Re: removing packages, pdf fonts

[Joris van der Hoeven]

On Sat, 6 Apr 2002, Nirmal Govind wrote:

> >A bit of C++ programming and a good knowledge of the pdf format,
> >especially about the fonts. See also
> 
> I'd be happy to take this up.. but I must warn that my progress is going to 
> be slow cos I'm doing my Ph.D. and working part-time.. but I'll do whatever 
> I can and if someone else with more time comes along then he/she can pick 
> up from where I stand..

Thanks for all help that you can give us.

> I've programmed in C++ for a while so I guess that's good but I have no 
> clue of what the pdf format looks like.. is there any documentation on the 
> format that I can look up? I looked at the printer.gen.cc file.. I have 
> questions but I'll start posting them on the developer mailing list as 
> David suggests...

I had a bit of difficulties finding some info on the web,
but finally I found good some:

http://www.pdfzone.com/resources/technicalinfo.html
http://www.fastio.com

> Btw, any idea of approximately how much time it would take me given my 
> knowledge or the lack of it?

No clue whatsoever; I do not know the pdf format.
Nevertheless, you only need to know a few things:

* The general structure of a pdf file (header, footer, etc.)

* Simple graphical constructs (lines, arcs, etc)

* And mainly: fonts...

It might be necessary that I make a few modifications in TeXmacs,
so that you may get some information about font metrics or
names of type 1 fonts which have to be used. Don't hesitate to
make such requests as soon as you get a better understanding of
the pdf format. Don't hesitate to inform us about things that you
have found out on the texmacs-dev list too, so that other developers
might continue if you lack of time.

> Also, I have a qn that I posted on the list but didn't get a reply - on the 
> wish list article, it states that TeXmacs  converts files to Postscript the 
> same way as Latex does so does that mean it uses dvips? If it does then is 
> there any way we can set a -Ppdf option so that it will generate type 1 fonts?

No, TeXmacs does *not* export to dvi, so this article is wrong...
Nevertheless, it might indeed be an idea to write an export filter to dvi
if that is easier and do what you say (however, at the long range,
we would still need a real native converter to pdf).

Thanks, Joris

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Joris van der Hoeven <address@hidden>
http://www.texmacs.org: GNU TeXmacs scientific text editor
http://www.math.u-psud.fr/~vdhoeven: personal homepage
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