FreeLists / open-beos-printing / [open-beos-printing] Minor progress and future development of PDF Writer

[Michael Pfeiffer <michael.pfeiffer@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all!

- I have rechecked pattern support recently. BePDF supports PDF patterns
  and the way I wanted to emulate pattern support in PDF Writer
  does work, opposed to what I said some time ago. 
  I have already made some work and will probably implement this soon.

- clipping to stroked graphics primitives needs to be implemented.
  Have done it for StrokeLine and now the PDF for gP TheWidget 
  looks fine (right gradient filled vertical bar):
  http://bepdf.sourceforge.net/temp/TheWidget.pdf
  
- finer control over font embedding should be implemented.
  User should be able to choose which fonts can be embedded.
  
- AFAIK BeOS supports drawing modes that can not be emulated in PDF 
  except by creating an image (and, or, xor, blending, ...).

  The simplest possible solution I can imagine is to generate an image for
  the entire page in a user defined DPI and render the entire page into it
  and then put this image in the PDF.

  Refinements: 
    - generate strips to reduce memory requirement while generating the
      PDF and later when it is rendered by a PDF viewer.
    - place only rectangular images from the "page image" that cover the area
      that is affected by not supported drawing modes and generate PDF for
      other parts as usual. (I hope you know what I mean).
      
  As a byproduct transparency can be supported as well without the need to wait 
until 
  PDFlib adds support for it.

- as I already told I have no time to implement anything soon, except
  pattern support. For me all but the last point (drawing modes with 
refinements) 
  would be quite easy to implement. So you can either wait until I have time
  to do it (which I don't expect before 2-3 month) or we recruit someone.

What are your thoughts?

Regards,
Michael