RE: Jade Backends (from The DSSSList Digest V2 #120)

["Frank A. Christoph" <christo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I personnally would rather for PS first, since PDF is so easy to get after
> (either with GhostScript or the Adobe Distiller), whereas i can't think of
> anything that translates PDF into PS.

Adobe Acrobat translates PDF into PS.  You can even do it in batch mode from
the command line.  Any PDF viewer which allows you to print the document can
be used to convert to PS.  If there is a "print to file" option (and there
always is), you can use that; otherwise, you could still set up a custom
spooler that would save the stream to a file.

Unless you have a very unusual page to layout (like say, one of those
PostScript demonstrations that draws a fractal procedurally), PDF->PS is the
way to go, not the other way around.  The reason is that a PDF file has much
more internal structure than a PS file; you can represent complicated page
structures, embed invisible structural tags in the output, search it, add
annotations to the text, update the file incrementally in terms of its
object structure, linearize it for incremental display (as in web
downloading), embed interactive elements and internal or external
hyperlinks, etc., etc.  All things that are difficult, impossible or
unavailable with a normal PostScript file, but fit in naturally with the
structural text paradigm of SGML.

--FC



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