Subject: PDF backend for (Open)Jade From: drescher@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Christof Drescher) Date: Fri, 05 May 2000 14:49:12 +0200 |
Hi DSSSL-users, in recent discussion there has been some talk about the need for a PDF backend to (Open)Jade again, especially when aiming towards more features like page-sequence etc.; since a lot of people seem to be interested in this, I'd like to make the announcement of just such a PDF backend on the horizon: As the result of a project in the last few months, I have implemented an almost complete PDF formatter for DSSSL flow object trees, which produces PDF files directely from the .fot output of JADE. It includes the following features: - supports all basic flow objects (simple-page-sequence, paragraph, graphics, tables etc.), yet no mathematical formulae or "advanced table features" - has proper line-breaking implemented (using the very same algorithm as original TeX :-) - page-breaking with page balancing and booklet features - uses standard PostScript Type1 fonts natively - allows to import gif, jpeg and (most important) other PDF files as graphics directely(!). The backend (called fot2pdf) is written in JAVA and can be used on most platforms easily. It is deliberately NOT to be included in the standard OpenJade source tree, but runs separately taking the generated FOT file as input. The backend has been used to produce several documents now and runs stable and produces a rather good quality (at least I think so). As a small drawback, it is fixed to western style texts (left-to-right/top-to-bottom) and fonts in the standard Adobe encoding. This information is presented some time before the program itself is made available so that not too much effort is wasted if someone plans to implement just the same. I intend to release the backend free of charge for non-commercial use. I expect to have the DSSSL community give their input to the further development of this backend once it's available; also, since formatting is not limited to the capabilities of any meta-format (like rtf etc.), there is a chance to have more features becoming implemented now. Of course, the release will be announced here. Further discussion is, of course, welcome. Cheers, Christof Drescher Pro Image GbR, Marburg, Germany P.S.: If someone has good place to keep this backend for downloading (e.g. on the OpenJade-pages), please let me know; if there should be enough interest, I could make it available maybe to the end of next week. DSSSList info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/dsssl/dssslist
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