[Desktop_printing] Agenda proposal: Replace PostScript by PDF asjob transfer format

[Till Kamppeter]

Hin-Tak Leung wrote:
> --- Till Kamppeter <till.kamppeter at gmx.net> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Another question: There are often problems with pre-processing
>>PostScript (like re-ordering pages, scaling, n-up, ...) due to lack of
>>DSC conformity. How easy/difficult is it to process PDF files?
>>
>>   Till
> 
> 
> Yes, I think the reasons Ralph stated are better ones for switching
> to pdf :-). 
>

I was also aware of the reasons Ralph mentioned, but perhaps, when I
posted, I thought more about the switchover of the architecture.

PDF is really the more modern and versatile format, but as with many
modern things one has the disadvantage of them being under continuous
development and so one has the workload of keeping all software up-to-date.

And GhostScript as a PostScript interpreter for printing seems to be
very stable, problems are mainly in displaying/converting PDF files and
screen display quality.

The long-run goal would be to use PDF as print job transfer format due
to its many advantages, the fix-the-distro-quickly solution would be to
limit GhostScripts tasks to rendering print jobs (and have PostScript as
input format) and use XPDF/poppler-based solutions for PDF file handling.

> Reordering pages, scaling, n-up are much easier with PDF than with postscript,
> I think;

Anyone cam confirm?

> that's just because Adobe had learned from postscript and made pdf
> having metadata for describing the overall structure, and
> pdf's are also randomly seekable/navigable based on the metadata.
> (the xref table at the end and what not).

Every PDF has such metadata?

   Till