Subject: Re: HOWTO
Janina Sajka
janina at rednote.net
Sat Apr 17 14:02:30 UTC 2004
Nico Kadel-Garcia writes:
> The idea that PDF is meant for printing is a common misconception. It's a
> "Portable Display Format", not a "Portable Printing Format". PDF documents
> often print better than other formats because they're better constructed.
OK, perhaps "meant for" isn't the right verb. But, I didn't want to insult PDF by saying "only good for."
If I'm to criticize the intent behind PDF as you give it, I'd have to call it a a narrowly conceived protocol derived from too constricted a set of use cases. It may do the job for you, and it may even do the job for a majority of people on the planet, but it leaves out a significant minority of users and is consequently inappropriate as a mass publishing protocol. In particular, it's inappropriate in settings such as U.S Government use under the strictures of the law popularly known as Sec. 508 (see http://www.afb.org/AboutPDF.asp).
>
> But to print them under Fedora, CUPS has automatic transformation tools
> built into it (which uses Ghostscript). You can use "pdf2ps" (which uses
> Ghostscript), you can use ImageMagick's "convert" utility (which uses
> Ghostscript), you can display them with xpdf and then print them from that
> software (which will use Ghostscript), etc. You may detect a theme here....
>
> Nico Kadel-Garcia
> System and Networks Administrator
> Mitsubishi Electric Research Lab
> <nkadel at merl.com>
>
>
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--
Janina Sajka, Director
Technology Research and Development
Governmental Relations Group
American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)
Email: janina at afb.net Phone: (202) 408-8175
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