Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 09:36:35 -0600 From: Kevin Kinsey <kdk@daleco.biz> To: "Michael W. Lucas" <mwlucas@blackhelicopters.org> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: replacement for Acrobat Professional? Message-ID: <43C52603.2030803@daleco.biz> In-Reply-To: <20060111142246.GA50712@bewilderbeast.blackhelicopters.org> References: <20060109195342.GA35789@bewilderbeast.blackhelicopters.org> <736C118F-A6DD-4476-9437-935C43A22771@submonkey.net> <20060110222616.GA45029@bewilderbeast.blackhelicopters.org> <20060110234752.GO73071@wantadilla.lemis.com> <43C49EC7.9020003@daleco.biz> <20060111142246.GA50712@bewilderbeast.blackhelicopters.org>
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Michael W. Lucas wrote: >On Tue, Jan 10, 2006 at 11:59:35PM -0600, Kevin Kinsey wrote: > > >>It's up to Michael, though, to tell us how well it works, I suppose. No >>package in packages-6-current/Latest, so I'm building from src, and >>headed for bed before it gets done I imagine. >> >> > >So, for posterity... > >I'd rate pdftops and flpsed as 95% of the way there for this audience. >Some small things don't work, particularly "layered" elements. Some >parts of the manuscript I was given were highlighted, for example. In >the original the highlighting is transparent, while the pdftops/flpsed >combination the highlighting obliterates the underlying text. There >are other, very minor variations. > >That last 5% might not be critical for most people; I would certainly >use it for preparing personal documents, or even documents within my >company. But OpenOffice's PDF export is far easier for preparing PDFs >in general. > >for this application, pdftops/flpsed is not acceptable. When you dump >a PDF directly to a web press and produce a book from it, tiny >variations in page placement or layout will result in a really useless >print run. But from the various tools people have suggested and that >I've tried last night and this morning, it's as good as we have. > > It certainly doesn't seem as "full-featured" as some commercial products (ref. subject line), and my short testing concurs with yours. I had some trouble with "image handling" --- I imagine that this is similar to the "layered elements" you mention; I have no great wealth of personal knowledge of the PDF format, though. The author's homepage states that flpsed is still alpha-quality software. I'd say it looks rather promising for the future, perhaps; we can hope so, and do what we can to support it. KDK -- "God doesn't play dice." --- Albert Einstein
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