[poppler] Annoying question: SVG output from Poppler?

[Leonard Rosenthol]

At 10:43 AM 5/19/2005, Marcus Silva wrote:
>    Due to the lack of open source tools to edit PDF/PS documents,

         What sort of editing are you trying to do with PDF/PS?   Simple 
text touchup?  Color management?  Other?


>it would be awesome to be able to covert PDF/PS files to SVG for editing.

         The biggest problem here is that both PS and PDF are MUCH richer 
in terms of renderable content than SVG (and that doesn't include all the 
non-content features available in PDF).  PDF supports 11 different 
colorspaces, while SVG supports only 1 (1.1/1.2 supports a second).  PDF's 
can handle fonts in 7 different formats, while SVG only supports 4 of 
them.  (etc.)

         So any conversion between the two is quite lossy.

         If that's OK for you, then there are solutions out there - you've 
noted two, for example.  I written an SVGOutputDev for Xpdf - it's not that 
complex an operation DEPENDING on where you put your functional limitations 
(eg. what you are willing to give up in the conversion process).

         If someone on the poppler team is willing to take ownership, I'd 
be happy to contribute it in it's current form, provided that I be allowed 
to use any modifications in my commercial version of same.


Leonard

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Leonard Rosenthol                            <mailto:leonardr at pdfsages.com>
Chief Technical Officer                      <http://www.pdfsages.com>
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