[cairo] Clickable links in PDF? Metadata?

[David Kastrup]

David Kastrup <dak at gnu.org> writes:

> Adrian Johnson <ajohnson at redneon.com> writes:
>
>> The main issue with adding support for non graphical PDF features is
>> that there is a lot of stuff in section 12, 13, and 14 of ISO32000. How
>> much of it should we support?
>
> Most of the other stuff would be either the business of the
> application, or of a specific more knowledgable PDFwrite_cairo library
> that can be maintained and extended without further changes to Cairo
> itself.

There is something to be said for an "abstract" non-specific library
that can represent the information contained in a PDF file, however:

That would make it possible to connect a document-producing application
and a viewer application (like Evince or xpdf) or widget while bypassing
the process of generating and parsing a PDF file altogether.  Without
the necessity of maintaining a complete consistent PDF file, partial
update/regeneration strategies depending on currently displayed material
could offer much better interactive response of PDF previews.

-- 
David Kastrup