Community PDF Project (was Revenue and the Open Source edition)

[JB]

I just downloaded the mac version of
XPDF as binaries.  It looks like they
would be easier to install than code
files but I have never embedded any
binaries before and do not know the
correct method to call them.  It would
be nice to make at least a basic pdf
reader external and then it can be
improved.  It would be a good lesson.

JB



> On May 4, 2016, at 10:28 AM, Paul Dupuis <paul at researchware.com> wrote:
> 
> On 5/4/2016 12:13 PM, RM wrote:
>> I would suppose the ideal thing would be both something that allows
>> one to render a PDF document,
>> and extract all or part of an embedded text layer (if one exists in
>> the original PDF).
> 
> The XPDF external from LiveCode for OSX and Win is based on Google's
> PDFium library. I can say this because I know something about the
> details of XPDF. Researchware (my company) development XPDF and recently
> transferred the rights to LiveCode.
> 
> Richard is correct in that the XPDF external not only opens and displays
> a PDF, but allows zooming, navigation, layout, hyperlinks, selection of
> text (for PDFs with editable text) or any potion of any page as an image
> selection, and allows you to extract text or images. It also supports
> password protected PDFs and more. Therefore, if ALL you want is just to
> display pages from a PDF it is certainly more than you may need. The
> same could be said about the feature set of LiveCode itself.
> 
> Richmond just showed that some people want more - in his case,
> extraction of all of part of the text. If you ONLY want to do that under
> script control, then that would be an incremental effort over just
> displaying a PDF.
> 
> If you want the USER to be able to select text (or images), then that is
> a significant chunk of work beyond just displaying a PDF as the PDFium
> library contains NO APIs for user selection and that must be original
> code added by the external. A large amount of effort went into making
> sure user selection of text was as good as Adobe or Preview or Foxit's
> PDF viewers, which was definitely not as easy as one might expect (or hope)!
> 
> I can tell you that a LOT of developer time (i.e money) went into the
> creation, QA testing, and refinement of XPDF.
> 
> Obviously, since Google PDFium is open source, anyone can create an
> alternative to XPDF, perhaps an even better version. If people want to
> build one, I encourage it. A competitive market of LiveCode PDF widgets
> just gives me more choice for my company's PDF needs ;-) However,  I
> offer the caution of experience that there are a lot more little
> "gotchas" in working with PDFium that anyone may realize, even after
> reading the APIs, and making another from scratch may be much more work
> than people might expect.
> 
> I think those interested in PDF might be better off continuing to lobby
> for LiveCode to offer XPDF as an add-on (like so many other excellent LC
> add-ons from Chartmaker to Wordlib to RRP Spell) for a appropriate
> price. It seems only logical that eventually they would convert it to an
> LC8 Widget as well.
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> use-livecode mailing list
> use-livecode at lists.runrev.com
> Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences:
> http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
>