Reading PDF - a cry for help

Admin admin at mfelkerco.com
Fri Sep 30 09:21:29 EDT 2011


  

I like that. pdf works everywhere (except that dark corner of
windows) - oh, you mean the 98% of all computer users dark corner? Oops,
forgot about them. 

Mike 

On Fri, 30 Sep 2011 01:12:43 -0600, Vokey,
John wrote: 

> The problem (success?) with pdf is that it is, uniquely,
pdf: it is text, stylized text, bitmaps, vector graphics, and everything
else. Covert eps, for example, to pdf and all is fine (you can easily
extract the eps from the pdf). Add a second pdf (or another eps) to that
same file, and the eps becomes encoded pdf: the same is true for
stylized text or anything else. All of which is to say, you cannot
easily extract a precise image from a more complex pdf file, especially
one that is vector graphics in form. You can, as Preview does, cut from
a pdf an aspect of that pdf as a pdf image, but that pdf won't be the
original graphic (typically). You can also extract the text in a simple
ascii form that, typically on Windows, loses all the ligatures (on the
Mac it is usually more successful). TeXShop, unlike Preview, for
example, does try to extract eps from pdf, but fails if the encoding was
other than eps-->pdf. Preview just doesn't bother as it is not usually
possible. OTH, pdf-->pdf always works, which is one of the principle
reasons pdf dominates everywhere (except in that dark world of
Windows).
> 
> I do most of my work in LaTeX, and most of my figures are
vector graphics. That means an entire manuscript when compiled to pdf,
including all the stylized text, tables and figures is *at most* a few
hundred K. I have books I have written in LaTeX that over hundreds of
pages and figures are still at most a few megabytes when compiled to
pdf. Even one of those figures of those documents if converted from pdf
to say, png, or tiff, or jpeg would be larger than the entire document
in pdf. My point is simple: if in pdf stay there: it is already the best
format.
> 
> On 2011-09-29, at 6:56 PM,
use-livecode-request at lists.runrev.com [1]wrote:
> 
>> I find all of this
somewhat tantalizing, but the only way I've found to make a PDF document
useful in what I'm doing is to take a screen shot of it and then paste
or import it as an image into the other application. Though I do this
mostly in MacDraft, I should imagine that the same technique can be used
in LC, since I often use MD as a method of transitioning different kinds
of images into LC. Of course I'm interested in what you "see" in a PDF;
not what else there might be there, of which I know nothing. I don't
understand all of this "parsing" of data from or in a PDF. Joe Wilkins
>

> --
> Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
> See 
>

> -Dr. John R. Vokey
> 
>
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