Print to PDF?

[Richmond Mathewson]

Peter Alcibiades wrote:
> Richmond, don't you want cups-pdf if its Ubuntu?  Its real simple.  Just
> gives you a virtual printer which is a file.  Or is there something else?
>
> Peter
>
> Richmond Mathewson-2 wrote:
>   
>> Print to PDF?
>>
>> I think I am reinventing the wheel . . .
>>
>> advice welcomed.
>> _______________________________________________
>>
>>     
I know how to produce pdf files from a 'regular' Mac or Linux
program . . . come on, Peter, give me a wee bit of credit . . .    :)

But I should like to have a universal method whereby I can print
directly from a text field in a RunRev stack/standalone to PDF
regardless of the platform the stack is running on.

For instance:

put field "X" into URL "file:test.pdf"

[which, bye-the-bye, produces a text file with the suffix .pdf]

which ACTUALLY produces a PDF file.

or:

open file "test.pdf" for write
write field "X" to file "test.pdf"

[which, bye-the-bye, also produces a text file with the suffix .pdf]

as one can EXPORT images as PNG, JPEG, GIF and so on, it would be
lovely if one could do something of the sort with text files:

write field "X" to file "test.pdf" as PDF

---------------------------------
Imagine a RunRev stack that can cope with the complexities of
producing really decent texts using highly complex writing systems
such as those used in the Indian subcontinent; now, with unicode
and so on, that is perfectly reasonable, and that sort of program
can pump out html files with the end result.

BUT . . .

suppose, owing to the complexity of that sort of writing system, coupled
with the fact that the unicode standard has not got designated slots
for all the written forms, the producer of the RunRev stack has had to 
produce
his/her own, non-standard unicode font to cope with those problems.

The end result should produce PDF files (that embed the special font) as
there is a very slim chance that an end-user/reader of such texts would have
that specialist font on their system.
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