[Pkg-cups-devel] Bug#658004: cups-pdf: Generate more accessible PDFs

[behr at physik.uni-wuerzburg.de]

Martin-Éric Racine <martin-eric.racine at iki.fi> wrote on 09/09/2014 
22:02:26:
> On Thu, 01 Mar 2012 15:40:43 +0100 "Volker C. Behr" 
> <behr at physik.uni-wuerzburg.de> wrote:
> > On 03/01/12 14:03, Brian Potkin wrote:
> > > Followup-For: Bug #658004
> > >
> > >
> > > https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cups-pdf/+bugs
> > >
> > > The really interesting discussion is in #820820 but you'll want to 
read
> > > #942866 too. The essence is that desktop applications output in PDF 
and
> > > jobs from lp/lpr are converted to PDF by CUPS. The extra processing 
by
> > > cups-pdf with Ghostscript may produce a less than optimal PDF.
> > 
> > I am aware that some desktop applications output in PDF - but not all 
> > (CUPS-PDF is not developed specifically for Linux). So I cannot assume 
a 
> > PDF workflow. Furthermore, not re-processing the PDF doesn't allow to 
> > change e.g. the PDF version.
> > Finally, if you already have a PDF you like as native output of your 
> > application - why not simply use that one?
> 
> I think that the main issue with our pdf2pdf usage is that it tends to
> systematically convert PDF documents containing text into one gigantic
> image, thus losing the possibility to copy/paste/search text content. If
> there is a pdf2pdf option that we can leverage to avoid this loss, then
> we really should use it by default.

I remain with my view that if your application already supports PDF output 
- why not simply print to a file? Furthermore, one feature of CUPS-PDF is 
the ability to use the full scope of GhostScript to generate custom PDFs - 
simply passing PDF through would hamper that option. Lastly, as stated 
above, CUPS-PDF is meant as a universal UNIX-tool, not just for Linux 
distributions implementing a PDF-workflow.

Regards,
Volker 
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