Hi, I'm wondering if there are plans to create a pdf writer for fpVectorial.

I was thinking of using Inkscape to create a template for reporting in a web application, then parse the SVG template using fpvectorial and output a PDF.

What do you think?
 
Leonardo M. Ramé
http://leonardorame.blogspot.com

Hello,

If you are willing to work on it too, I can help you write a pdf exporter.

It should be easy, you just have to take an example document plus the Adobe documentation. PDF is just text plus an eventual zip compression.

The drawing itself is just plain PostScript which is also simple.

----- Original Message -----

Ok, I'll try to start the exporter as my next weekend project.  
Leonardo M. Ramé
http://leonardorame.blogspot.com

Be warned, the Adobe documentation is incomplete in some subtle details.

E.g. the Length of an Stream is specified so vaguely, that the stored Length (observed) frequently is something between the number of data bytes with or without embedded EOL markers. See the PDF spec, 7.3.8.2 Steam Extent.

Such flaws can prevent the decoding of a PDF document, because the exact stream decoder is a secret of Adobe (like details of .NET are Microsoft secrets).

Please let me know when somebody finds source code of an PDF parser, that e.g. allows to extract the exact page count from any PDF document.

DoDi

On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 4:34 AM, Hans-Peter Diettrich

Please let me know when somebody finds source code of an PDF parser, that e.g. allows to extract the exact page count from any PDF document.

fpvectorial already has a PDF importer, so you could look there. I haven't written it, so I don't know any more details about how it works, just that it works.

Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote

Be warned, the Adobe documentation is incomplete in some subtle details.

I think that this kind of doubt can be solved by analyzing example documents, can't it?

Did you take a look at SumatraPDF? Obviously, I haven't tried it on "any" PDF document, but so far didn't have problems with page counts. If you have a pdf that causes page count problems I would be glad to test it. Portableapps.com has a portabale version.

Ludo

Thanks for the hint :-)

DoDi

> Be warned, the Adobe documentation is incomplete in some subtle details. I think that this kind of doubt can be solved by analyzing example documents, can't it?

No. The mentioned stream length is inconsistent in all files I examined :-(

DoDi