Open Source Complement to PDF? 11
nodvin asks: "Is there an Open Source alternative to PDF files? In the late 80's and early 90's I was building and distributing documents in a competing format called DigitaPaper by a company called Common Ground. DigitalPaper was a nice format and more cost effective than Adobe Acrobat. Common Ground seems to have lost out to Adobe (marketing muscle can be more important than the capabilities or qualities
of competing products) and the company, or at least the product and
format, seems to have been acquired by Hummingbird. Hummingbird is no longer providing any support for the product but is still providing the DigitalPaper viewer and there is a free Common Ground Internet Edition. Perhaps Hummingbird could be convinced to Open Source the code to Common Ground as well as the format of DigitalPaper?"
Re:What do you need it for ? (Score:1)
Ade_
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truly portable PDF? (Score:1)
Re:Try Ghostscript (Score:1)
Re:Try Ghostscript (Score:1)
open-source PDF tools exist (Score:1)
~wog
Re:Try Ghostscript (Score:2)
PDF Specs are Available (Score:2)
Re:open-source PDF tools exist (Score:2)
The spec for PDF is "available" *IF* you already grok PDF itself - IOW if I were sitting here on a plan9 box, I would not be able to read the spec in order to write an open-source reader / editor / printer of PDF files. That feels "unclean", to start with.
If the open-source world is lagging behind due to attempting to follow non-open (see the GFDL, for example) specs, there's a problem.
~Tim
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Try Ghostscript (Score:3)
Re:Try Ghostscript (Score:3)
Ghostscript's ps2pdf output format uses Flate compression where requests for LZW compression are made. This is in the documentation, and is that way because of the patent problems.
GS's ps2pdf generally produces pdf files around the same size as (or only slightly larger than) Acrobat's Distiller.
Re:Try Ghostscript (Score:3)
Bruce