[poppler] Pixel tracer

[Volker Grabsch]

Dear Poppler developers,

Albert Astals Cid schrieb:
> El Dimarts, 18 de novembre de 2014, a les 12:52:34, Volker Grabsch va escriure:
> > Dear Poppler developers,
> > 
> > I have the task to render PDF documents and to trace back each output
> > pixel to the object(s) that were rendered at this place.  To achieve
> > this, Poppler is a great help, so I'd like to contribute something
> > back.  Attached is the second smallest patch (see below) I came up
> > with.
> > 
> > Do you think it makes sense to include this feature in Poppler?
> 
> Thanks for the patch :)

Attached is an improved version of the patch.  There was one nasty
typo, and I adjusted the interface so it transports the source alpha
in addition to the coordinates.

(I needed the alpha because there are lots of pixels "drawn" with
source alpha == 0, so a pixel tracer must be able to filter these
out.)

> I am not totally sure it makes sense, seems a bit of a corner case feature and 
> the more code we include the more maintainance overhead we have (and we are 
> really low on manpower).

I believe it would be nice if a PDF viewer could highlight individual
PDF objects - in their original form as well as what's left after
being overlapped by other objects.

Nevertheless, this feature is quite special, that's for sure.

> What do other think?

Indeed, it would be nice to read some more opinions on that!


Gruß
Volker

-- 
Volker Grabsch
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