* Generating PDFs with Ada @ 2011-01-09 1:00 R. Tyler Croy 2011-01-09 9:29 ` Pascal Obry ` (4 more replies) 0 siblings, 5 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: R. Tyler Croy @ 2011-01-09 1:00 UTC (permalink / raw) I have a project idea in my head that I'd /like/ to build with Ada rather than Python but I can't seem to find a library for generating PDF files with Ada. Does such a beast exist? -- - R. Tyler Croy -------------------------------------- Code: http://github.com/rtyler ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-09 1:00 Generating PDFs with Ada R. Tyler Croy @ 2011-01-09 9:29 ` Pascal Obry 2011-01-10 2:29 ` Stephen Leake 2011-01-09 9:43 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov ` (3 subsequent siblings) 4 siblings, 1 reply; 69+ messages in thread From: Pascal Obry @ 2011-01-09 9:29 UTC (permalink / raw) To: R. Tyler Croy Le 09/01/2011 02:00, R. Tyler Croy a écrit : > I have a project idea in my head that I'd /like/ to build with Ada rather than > Python but I can't seem to find a library for generating PDF files with Ada. > > Does such a beast exist? Depending on the actual project, why not generate Latex and call pdflatex to generate the PDF? Pascal. -- --|------------------------------------------------------ --| Pascal Obry Team-Ada Member --| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE --|------------------------------------------------------ --| http://www.obry.net - http://v2p.fr.eu.org --| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination" --| --| gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-key F949BD3B ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-09 9:29 ` Pascal Obry @ 2011-01-10 2:29 ` Stephen Leake 2011-01-10 3:48 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 0 siblings, 1 reply; 69+ messages in thread From: Stephen Leake @ 2011-01-10 2:29 UTC (permalink / raw) Pascal Obry <pascal@obry.net> writes: > Le 09/01/2011 02:00, R. Tyler Croy a écrit : >> I have a project idea in my head that I'd /like/ to build with Ada rather than >> Python but I can't seem to find a library for generating PDF files with Ada. >> >> Does such a beast exist? > > Depending on the actual project, why not generate Latex and call > pdflatex to generate the PDF? I considered that path once for building better PDF versions of the Ada language reference manual. I concluded it was not any easier than generating the PDF in the first place. I suppose it depends on how complex your document is. -- -- Stephe ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-10 2:29 ` Stephen Leake @ 2011-01-10 3:48 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-10 10:19 ` Georg Bauhaus 2011-01-15 13:55 ` Elias Salomão Helou Neto 0 siblings, 2 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) @ 2011-01-10 3:48 UTC (permalink / raw) Le Mon, 10 Jan 2011 03:29:00 +0100, Stephen Leake <stephen_leake@stephe-leake.org> a écrit: > I considered that path once for building better PDF versions of the Ada > language reference manual. I concluded it was not any easier than > generating the PDF in the first place. > > I suppose it depends on how complex your document is. Also I feel LaTeX and its typical utilities are not that much Unicode ready (although Unicode is already 20 years old exactly this year). Writing PDF at the first place is better for that reason at least. -- Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour les chiens. “I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-10 3:48 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) @ 2011-01-10 10:19 ` Georg Bauhaus 2011-01-10 17:02 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-15 13:55 ` Elias Salomão Helou Neto 1 sibling, 1 reply; 69+ messages in thread From: Georg Bauhaus @ 2011-01-10 10:19 UTC (permalink / raw) On 10.01.11 04:48, Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) wrote: > Le Mon, 10 Jan 2011 03:29:00 +0100, Stephen Leake > <stephen_leake@stephe-leake.org> a écrit: >> I considered that path once for building better PDF versions of the Ada >> language reference manual. I concluded it was not any easier than >> generating the PDF in the first place. >> >> I suppose it depends on how complex your document is. > Also I feel LaTeX and its typical utilities are not that much Unicode ready > (although Unicode is already 20 years old exactly this year). Writing PDF at > the first place is better for that reason at least. Another approach is to rely on existing standards and tools: produce input suitable for PDF rendering via XSL FO. Control the process from within your Ada program. OK, that's less sexy than writing NIH software. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-10 10:19 ` Georg Bauhaus @ 2011-01-10 17:02 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 0 siblings, 0 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) @ 2011-01-10 17:02 UTC (permalink / raw) Le Mon, 10 Jan 2011 11:19:01 +0100, Georg Bauhaus <rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de> a écrit: > Another approach is to rely on existing standards and tools: > produce input suitable for PDF rendering via XSL FO. > Control the process from within your Ada program. Do know and use XSL, but not XSL-FO. However the web seems to agree with that point. English: “The most common and best supported print output is currently Adobe PDF” http://www.learn-xsl-fo-tutorial.com/ French: « XSL-FO (Formatting Objects) est l’outil de prédilection pour générer du PDF » http://dosimple.ch/articles/Introduction_XSL-FO/ Thanks for the tip! > OK, that's less sexy than writing NIH software. National Institutes of Health ? (oops) -- Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour les chiens. “I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-10 3:48 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-10 10:19 ` Georg Bauhaus @ 2011-01-15 13:55 ` Elias Salomão Helou Neto 2011-01-15 14:51 ` Pascal Obry 1 sibling, 1 reply; 69+ messages in thread From: Elias Salomão Helou Neto @ 2011-01-15 13:55 UTC (permalink / raw) On Jan 10, 1:48 am, Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) <yannick_duch...@yahoo.fr> wrote: > Le Mon, 10 Jan 2011 03:29:00 +0100, Stephen Leake > <stephen_le...@stephe-leake.org> a écrit:> I considered that path once for building better PDF versions of the Ada > > language reference manual. I concluded it was not any easier than > > generating the PDF in the first place. > > > I suppose it depends on how complex your document is. > > Also I feel LaTeX and its typical utilities are not that much Unicode > ready (although Unicode is already 20 years old exactly this year). This is not true, simply use \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} \usepackage[T1]{fontenc} at the preamble and you're ready to go Unicode. There are also great tools for generating vector graphics (take a look at the Tikz/PGF pacakage). > Writing PDF at the first place is better for that reason at least. As pointed out, no. OTOH, going this way would potentially result in much faster software, but in may cases this is not so relevant. Elias. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-15 13:55 ` Elias Salomão Helou Neto @ 2011-01-15 14:51 ` Pascal Obry 2011-01-15 15:20 ` Elias Salomão Helou Neto 2011-01-15 17:55 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 0 siblings, 2 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Pascal Obry @ 2011-01-15 14:51 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Elias Salomão Helou Neto Le 15/01/2011 14:55, Elias Salom�o Helou Neto a �crit : > This is not true, simply use > > \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} > \usepackage[T1]{fontenc} Right, I'm using this since long time, working just fine. > There are also great tools for generating vector graphics (take a look > at the Tikz/PGF pacakage). Agreed too, I've discovered this package last year, it is a must for sure! Pascal. -- --|------------------------------------------------------ --| Pascal Obry Team-Ada Member --| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE --|------------------------------------------------------ --| http://www.obry.net - http://v2p.fr.eu.org --| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination" --| --| gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-key F949BD3B ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-15 14:51 ` Pascal Obry @ 2011-01-15 15:20 ` Elias Salomão Helou Neto 2011-01-15 17:55 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 1 sibling, 0 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Elias Salomão Helou Neto @ 2011-01-15 15:20 UTC (permalink / raw) > > This is not true, simply use > > > \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} > > \usepackage[T1]{fontenc} > > Right, I'm using this since long time, working just fine. Have you read the TeXBook? It is even fun to read! And it is impressive to notice that Knuth had foreseen and gracefully handled such encoding issues long before they become a mainstream problem in computation. This reminds me a quotation from Schopenhauer: "Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see." Also, the whole language is beautifully designed. Anyone should, if not read, at least know of the classical books in his/her area and the TeXbook is surely a major achievement in the field of computation, the work of a true genius. Elias. P.S.: Sorry if I've gone off-topic here, but could not resist. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-15 14:51 ` Pascal Obry 2011-01-15 15:20 ` Elias Salomão Helou Neto @ 2011-01-15 17:55 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-16 3:13 ` Elias Salomão Helou Neto 1 sibling, 1 reply; 69+ messages in thread From: Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) @ 2011-01-15 17:55 UTC (permalink / raw) Le Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:51:39 +0100, Pascal Obry <pascal@obry.net> a écrit: > Le 15/01/2011 14:55, Elias Salomão Helou Neto a écrit : >> This is not true, simply use >> >> \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} >> \usepackage[T1]{fontenc} > > Right, I'm using this since long time, working just fine. What about mixing different text directions in the same text ? What about combined form of letter whose shapes change depending on the context ? All my attempt here failed (I use to think about TeX for PDF generation too, but gave up, and I would not install a too much heavy application on a server anyway, especially when no root privilege). >> There are also great tools for generating vector graphics (take a look >> at the Tikz/PGF pacakage). > > Agreed too, I've discovered this package last year, it is a must for > sure! May be, but XML is more widely supported as a parsable format. And vector graphic are typically subject to the kind of access and requests XML allows, especially with formal diagrams. -- Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour les chiens. “I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-15 17:55 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) @ 2011-01-16 3:13 ` Elias Salomão Helou Neto 2011-01-16 3:42 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 0 siblings, 1 reply; 69+ messages in thread From: Elias Salomão Helou Neto @ 2011-01-16 3:13 UTC (permalink / raw) > What about mixing different text directions in the same text ? This one is hard with TeX. Still, there seems to be some recent advances, I just don't recall the TeX variant that tries to tackle the issue. > What about > combined form of letter whose shapes change depending on the context ? Do you mean ligatures? This is perfectly possible. Otherwise, please explain better what you mean. > I would not install a too much heavy application on a > server anyway, especially when no root privilege). Well, you can pretty much install only what you need. Furthermore, the privileges issue is not quite TeX related. > May be, but XML is more widely supported as a parsable format. And vector This one is indeed a good point to keep in mind. > graphic are typically subject to the kind of access and requests XML > allows, especially with formal diagrams. Agreed too. Now you made clear the point that if a doc is to be modified after generated, XML may be a better choice than .tex because of its natural "parseability". OTOH this may not be true even if modifications are required. For example, I may have lost it, but was there any agreement on how to go from XML to PDF? Elias. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-16 3:13 ` Elias Salomão Helou Neto @ 2011-01-16 3:42 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 0 siblings, 0 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) @ 2011-01-16 3:42 UTC (permalink / raw) Le Sun, 16 Jan 2011 04:13:50 +0100, Elias Salomão Helou Neto <eshneto@gmail.com> a écrit: > This one is hard with TeX. Still, there seems to be some recent > advances, I just don't recall the TeX variant that tries to tackle the > issue. This is the big one which weighted 1GB (ouch). Forget the name too, I mark this topic and will e-mail you if ever I get this name back. > Do you mean ligatures? This is perfectly possible. Otherwise, please > explain better what you mean. This is indeed related to ligature and is a kind of ligature, while more complex. With some language, the shape of a letter totally change depending on its context. The most common example is Arabic. Unicode has defined Arabic Presentation Forms for that purpose (Form-A and Form-B). You may find it here: http://www.unicode.org/charts/ in “Middle Eastern Scripts” Some examples here (one of my own site, french, but you can still look at the table at the end of the page): http://www.les-ziboux.rasama.org/ecriture-arabe-cursive.html > OTOH this may not be true even if modifications are required. For > example, I may have lost it, but was there any agreement on how to go > from XML to PDF? Yes, there is a common one already mentioned here, which is XSL-FO. Two of the most famous way to turn an XML document into another are: XSL (mainly for XML -> XML and XML -> HTML) and XSL-FO (mainly for XML -> PDF). XSL is for transformation of a markups document into another markups document, and XSL-FO is transformation of a markups document into a representation on a render device (screen, PDF, etc). This can be compared to what CSS is to HTML (a simplified view). Feel free to e-mail me if you need more details (as I am jobless, I am also available for services in this area, if ever you need). -- Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour les chiens. “I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-09 1:00 Generating PDFs with Ada R. Tyler Croy 2011-01-09 9:29 ` Pascal Obry @ 2011-01-09 9:43 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov 2011-01-09 11:28 ` leonid 2011-01-09 15:36 ` Gautier write-only ` (2 subsequent siblings) 4 siblings, 1 reply; 69+ messages in thread From: Dmitry A. Kazakov @ 2011-01-09 9:43 UTC (permalink / raw) On 09 Jan 2011 01:00:55 GMT, R. Tyler Croy wrote: > I have a project idea in my head that I'd /like/ to build with Ada rather than > Python but I can't seem to find a library for generating PDF files with Ada. > > Does such a beast exist? Cairo has PDF surfaces. A surface in Cairo is the backend where the drawing goes. So you can paint and write texts directly into a PDF file from Ada using cairoada bindings. -- Regards, Dmitry A. Kazakov http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-09 9:43 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov @ 2011-01-09 11:28 ` leonid 0 siblings, 0 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: leonid @ 2011-01-09 11:28 UTC (permalink / raw) On Jan 9, 11:43 am, "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mail...@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote: > On 09 Jan 2011 01:00:55 GMT, R. Tyler Croy wrote: > > > I have a project idea in my head that I'd /like/ to build with Ada rather than > > Python but I can't seem to find a library for generating PDF files with Ada. > > > Does such a beast exist? > > Cairo has PDF surfaces. A surface in Cairo is the backend where the drawing > goes. So you can paint and write texts directly into a PDF file from Ada > using cairoada bindings. > > -- > Regards, > Dmitry A. Kazakovhttp://www.dmitry-kazakov.de qtada (http:/users1.jabry.com/adastudio/index.html) supports all document formats Leonid ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-09 1:00 Generating PDFs with Ada R. Tyler Croy 2011-01-09 9:29 ` Pascal Obry 2011-01-09 9:43 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov @ 2011-01-09 15:36 ` Gautier write-only 2011-01-10 18:54 ` Adam Beneschan 2011-01-12 14:14 ` RasikaSrinivasan@gmail.com 4 siblings, 0 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Gautier write-only @ 2011-01-09 15:36 UTC (permalink / raw) On Jan 9, 2:00 am, "R. Tyler Croy" wrote: > I have a project idea in my head that I'd /like/ to build with Ada rather than > Python but I can't seem to find a library for generating PDF files with Ada. > > Does such a beast exist? Not that I know. From time to time I am tempted to make a standalone "PDF Writer" in the fashion of Excel Writer ( http://excel-writer.sf.net/ ), eventually using existing sources. Did not find a real incentive or personal or professional need up to now. You can begin with the basic and essential features, avoid other ones like compression, and stick to PDF 1.2, you probably you get something usable within a few days - it was the case for Excel Writer. Easier to do than what one could thing and it is very satisfying to see the result. If it can help too, there is a PostScript generator there: http://sf.net/projects/mathpaqs/ , in the ./graph directory. HTH ______________________________________________________________________________ Gautier's Ada programming -- http://gautiersblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Ada NB: follow the above link for a working e-mail address ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-09 1:00 Generating PDFs with Ada R. Tyler Croy ` (2 preceding siblings ...) 2011-01-09 15:36 ` Gautier write-only @ 2011-01-10 18:54 ` Adam Beneschan 2011-01-11 1:50 ` Randy Brukardt ` (2 more replies) 2011-01-12 14:14 ` RasikaSrinivasan@gmail.com 4 siblings, 3 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Adam Beneschan @ 2011-01-10 18:54 UTC (permalink / raw) On Jan 8, 5:00 pm, "R. Tyler Croy" <ty...@linux.com> wrote: > I have a project idea in my head that I'd /like/ to build with Ada rather than > Python but I can't seem to find a library for generating PDF files with Ada. > > Does such a beast exist? As long as we're on sort of a similar subject, I've wondered several times if there are Ada libraries for creating Microsoft Word documents. -- Adam ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-10 18:54 ` Adam Beneschan @ 2011-01-11 1:50 ` Randy Brukardt 2011-01-11 8:51 ` Stephen Leake 2011-01-12 21:06 ` Florian Weimer 2 siblings, 0 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Randy Brukardt @ 2011-01-11 1:50 UTC (permalink / raw) "Adam Beneschan" <adam@irvine.com> wrote in message news:9f23e50a-2c2c-4ccc-bd56-f6ffdc6c7ee7@37g2000prx.googlegroups.com... >On Jan 8, 5:00 pm, "R. Tyler Croy" <ty...@linux.com> wrote: >> I have a project idea in my head that I'd /like/ to build with Ada rather >> than >> Python but I can't seem to find a library for generating PDF files with >> Ada. >> >> Does such a beast exist? > >As long as we're on sort of a similar subject, I've wondered several >times if there are Ada libraries for creating Microsoft Word >documents. The output module for the Ada Reference Manual formatter can create .rtf files (as well as .html files). It doesn't support anything not needed in the various Standards, but that still is quite a bit. I rather wish I had designed it a bit more flexibly so that the formats were not quite so firmly defined. Still, it would make a decent start in that direction. The ARM Formatter is supposed to be licensed as GPL software (it will be as soon as I get a round tuit). Randy. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-10 18:54 ` Adam Beneschan 2011-01-11 1:50 ` Randy Brukardt @ 2011-01-11 8:51 ` Stephen Leake 2011-01-11 15:37 ` Adam Beneschan 2011-01-12 9:00 ` Maciej Sobczak 2011-01-12 21:06 ` Florian Weimer 2 siblings, 2 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Stephen Leake @ 2011-01-11 8:51 UTC (permalink / raw) Adam Beneschan <adam@irvine.com> writes: > On Jan 8, 5:00 pm, "R. Tyler Croy" <ty...@linux.com> wrote: >> I have a project idea in my head that I'd /like/ to build with Ada rather than >> Python but I can't seem to find a library for generating PDF files with Ada. >> >> Does such a beast exist? > > As long as we're on sort of a similar subject, I've wondered several > times if there are Ada libraries for creating Microsoft Word > documents. I hope not :) -- -- Stephe ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-11 8:51 ` Stephen Leake @ 2011-01-11 15:37 ` Adam Beneschan 2011-01-11 18:41 ` Ludovic Brenta 2011-01-12 9:00 ` Maciej Sobczak 1 sibling, 1 reply; 69+ messages in thread From: Adam Beneschan @ 2011-01-11 15:37 UTC (permalink / raw) On Jan 11, 12:51 am, Stephen Leake <stephen_le...@stephe-leake.org> wrote: > > As long as we're on sort of a similar subject, I've wondered several > > times if there are Ada libraries for creating Microsoft Word > > documents. > > I hope not :) Why? (Maybe I shouldn't pursue this, but I've gotten curious about what the thinking is behind this sort of answer.) -- Adam ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-11 15:37 ` Adam Beneschan @ 2011-01-11 18:41 ` Ludovic Brenta 2011-01-11 20:09 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-11 20:47 ` Adam Beneschan 0 siblings, 2 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Ludovic Brenta @ 2011-01-11 18:41 UTC (permalink / raw) Adam Beneschan writes: > On Jan 11, 12:51 am, Stephen Leake <stephen_le...@stephe-leake.org> > wrote: > >> > As long as we're on sort of a similar subject, I've wondered several >> > times if there are Ada libraries for creating Microsoft Word >> > documents. >> >> I hope not :) > > Why? (Maybe I shouldn't pursue this, but I've gotten curious about > what the thinking is behind this sort of answer.) Because Microsoft Word is proprietary and uses a non-standard, proprietary and ever-changing format (think "planned obsolescence"). Even the more recent so-called "Open XML" format contains many parts that are not in the public spec, making it anything but "open". You are a proponent of Ada. One of the selling points of the language is that it is not only an official ISO standard but an open one at that. Microsoft formats are neither official ISO standards nor open. In contrast: PDF/A, appropriate for immutable content, is ISO 19005-1:2005; OpenDocument, appropriate for mutable content, is ISO/IEC 26300:2006; full PDF 1.7 is ISO 32000-1:2008. -- Ludovic Brenta. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-11 18:41 ` Ludovic Brenta @ 2011-01-11 20:09 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-11 20:47 ` Adam Beneschan 1 sibling, 0 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) @ 2011-01-11 20:09 UTC (permalink / raw) Le Tue, 11 Jan 2011 19:41:13 +0100, Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> a écrit: > You are a proponent of Ada. One of the selling points of the language > is that it is not only an official ISO standard but an open one at that. > Microsoft formats are neither official ISO standards nor open. In > contrast: True. The only exception to this is the ECMA-234 standard for the basic MS Windows API. http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-234.htm Otherwise trying to get relevant documentation about the Word format is a nightmare (and these documentations are mostly hackings, reverse engineering and the like). And it is the same since long. -- Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour les chiens. “I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-11 18:41 ` Ludovic Brenta 2011-01-11 20:09 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) @ 2011-01-11 20:47 ` Adam Beneschan 2011-01-11 22:05 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) ` (3 more replies) 1 sibling, 4 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Adam Beneschan @ 2011-01-11 20:47 UTC (permalink / raw) On Jan 11, 10:41 am, Ludovic Brenta <ludo...@ludovic-brenta.org> wrote: > Adam Beneschan writes: > > On Jan 11, 12:51 am, Stephen Leake <stephen_le...@stephe-leake.org> > > wrote: > > >> > As long as we're on sort of a similar subject, I've wondered several > >> > times if there are Ada libraries for creating Microsoft Word > >> > documents. > > >> I hope not :) > > > Why? (Maybe I shouldn't pursue this, but I've gotten curious about > > what the thinking is behind this sort of answer.) > > Because Microsoft Word is proprietary and uses a non-standard, > proprietary and ever-changing format (think "planned obsolescence"). > Even the more recent so-called "Open XML" format contains many parts > that are not in the public spec, making it anything but "open". > > You are a proponent of Ada. One of the selling points of the language > is that it is not only an official ISO standard but an open one at that. > Microsoft formats are neither official ISO standards nor open. So what? Does "being a proponent of Ada" necessarily imply "being a proponent of users ditching all their proprietary, non-ISO, non-open stuff and changing their entire computing environment to fit some 'openness' paradigm"? I sure don't see it. There are a lot of Windows users out there. There are Ada compilers targeted to Windows (or do you object to that?). Many of those Windows users use tools like Microsoft Office. Do you believe that the Ada community should tell them, "Sorry, those tools aren't based on ISO standards, so Ada isn't for you"? I thought we were trying to encourage the spread of the Ada language. And I'm sure there are other tools out there (besides MS Office) that generate .doc files. Do we intend to tell those tools' authors, "Ada would be a great language for writing your tool--it would make your tool more robust and easier to maintain--but we don't want you to use it because you're generating something that has a proprietary format, so please use C++ instead"? Why??? As for Microsoft using a "non-standard, proprietary and ever-changing format", there seems to be some format information available at http://www.microsoft.com/interop/docs/officebinaryformats.mspx How often this changes, I don't know, but they do have an interest in keeping things compatible, so something written according to this format would (I would think) work with any version of Microsoft Word for a number of years, at least, even if the format specification doesn't include all the latest features. (I notice that it's a specification for .doc files but there may not a public one for .docx). Still, I think that, at least hypothetically, this format information could be used to write a useful tool that generates a Word file, if one decided that it was necessary. It may be that the need for writing a Word document is small enough that nobody has considered it worth their while to write a library like that. I can accept that as a reason. But the attitude that I thought I detected---"I hope [that nobody writes a library like that]"---is not one that I believe serves the Ada community. I apologize if I read too much into anything anyone said. -- Adam ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-11 20:47 ` Adam Beneschan @ 2011-01-11 22:05 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-11 22:14 ` Ludovic Brenta ` (2 subsequent siblings) 3 siblings, 0 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) @ 2011-01-11 22:05 UTC (permalink / raw) Le Tue, 11 Jan 2011 21:47:58 +0100, Adam Beneschan <adam@irvine.com> a écrit: > So what? Does "being a proponent of Ada" necessarily imply "being a > proponent of users ditching all their proprietary, non-ISO, non-open > stuff and changing their entire computing environment to fit some > 'openness' paradigm"? I sure don't see it. Yes. > http://www.microsoft.com/interop/docs/officebinaryformats.mspx Good, this leads me to this: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff381461.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd208104.aspx Mmmh, this, should not be missed: > Microsoft Open Specification Promise > Published: September 12, 2006 | Updated: February 1, 2007 > -- > Microsoft irrevocably promises not to assert any Microsoft Necessary > Claims against you for making, using, selling, offering for sale, > importing or distributing any implementation to the extent it > conforms to a Covered Specification (“Covered Implementation”), > subject to the following. This is a personal promise directly from > Microsoft to you, and you acknowledge as a condition of benefiting > from it that no Microsoft rights are received from suppliers, > distributors, or otherwise in connection with this promise. If you > file, maintain or voluntarily participate in a patent infringement > lawsuit against a Microsoft implementation of such Covered > Specification, then this personal promise does not apply [...] Source: http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp/default.mspx In less words, if you want to be friend with MS, you have to not sue them ;) -- Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour les chiens. “I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-11 20:47 ` Adam Beneschan 2011-01-11 22:05 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) @ 2011-01-11 22:14 ` Ludovic Brenta 2011-01-11 22:22 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) ` (4 more replies) 2011-01-11 22:14 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-12 9:36 ` Pascal Obry 3 siblings, 5 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Ludovic Brenta @ 2011-01-11 22:14 UTC (permalink / raw) Adam Beneschan writes on comp.lang.ada: > There are a lot of Windows users out there. There are Ada compilers > targeted to Windows (or do you object to that?). Many of those > Windows users use tools like Microsoft Office. Do you believe that > the Ada community should tell them, "Sorry, those tools aren't based > on ISO standards, so Ada isn't for you"? No, I think we should tell them "tools should generate PDF or OpenDocument, not a proprietary format"; this is true whatever language the tools are written in. BTW, I object to the use of Microsoft Word or any word processor for professional documents in the first place. Professional document management requires: * separation of form from content (documents should not contain the definition of styles; they should point to shared style sheets). * compatibility with multiple (current and future) professional version control systems providing the ability to branch, merge and tag versioned documents and versioned style sheets by multiple people at the same time; the only format which in my experience has this property is Plain Text, possibly with markup! * compatibility with multiple (current and future) editors and viewers on multiple (current and future) platforms; think of legal requirements that documents be readable 100 years from now, and the fact that the only extant documents that have proven to have this property are on paper, parchment or papyrus. * compatibility with search and indexing software. * compatibility with cryptographic signatures, for authentication of documents * compatibility with multiple encryption algorithms, current and future, for secrecy. > I thought we were trying to encourage the spread of the Ada language. The only correlation between Ada and PDF is that both are ISO standards and that being an ISO standard is a Good Thing(tm); other than that the case against proprietary formats is independent on the implementation language of tools. > And I'm sure there are other tools out there (besides MS Office) that > generate .doc files. Apart from Microsoft's own, I can't think of any such tool. Then again, I don't use office software much, I don't use Windows, and I would certainly not use, much less buy, a tool that locks my data into a proprietary format like .doc. Maybe that's because I'm a software engineer and not a lemming :) > Do we intend to tell those tools' authors, "Ada would be a great > language for writing your tool--it would make your tool more robust > and easier to maintain--but we don't want you to use it because you're > generating something that has a proprietary format, so please use C++ > instead"? Why??? Ah, but I don't think C++ would make it any easier for them to generate .doc files than Ada would. Quite the contrary, in fact :) > As for Microsoft using a "non-standard, proprietary and ever-changing > format", there seems to be some format information available at > > http://www.microsoft.com/interop/docs/officebinaryformats.mspx OK. > How often this changes, I don't know, but they do have an interest in > keeping things compatible, This is only half true. Their interest is to make their software backward compatible (to ease migration to newer versions of their software) but forward incompatible (to *force* migration to newer versions of their software, aka planned obsolescence, and break competitors' tools, aka total dominance). The only reason why they have published some specifications (the "Microsoft Open Specification Promise") is because "open" has become a buzzword and they want to be "buzzword compliant" and combat the rise of actual open standards. Remember: standards exist to protect customers against greedy vendors, not the opposite. Me, I'll choose a Standard over a Promise every time. > so something written according to this format would (I would think) > work with any version of Microsoft Word for a number of years, at > least, even if the format specification doesn't include all the latest > features. (I notice that it's a specification for .doc files but > there may not a public one for .docx). Still, I think that, at least > hypothetically, this format information could be used to write a > useful tool that generates a Word file, if one decided that it was > necessary. Technically, this is true; but generating PDF or OpenDocument is a better alternative, and not more difficult than generating .doc. (BTW, .doc is not a single format, it is a series of incompatible formats dating back to circa 1989, only the last of which has been published). > It may be that the need for writing a Word document is small enough > that nobody has considered it worth their while to write a library > like that. I can accept that as a reason. But the attitude that I > thought I detected---"I hope [that nobody writes a library like > that]"---is not one that I believe serves the Ada community. I > apologize if I read too much into anything anyone said. Like Stephe, I too hope that nobody writes a library that helps generate .doc files. My reason reason is that such a tool would endorse the proprietary format and help continue the dominance of evil proprietary formats against standard ones. The same tool could be just as useful writing PDF, DocBook, OpenDocument or even Plain Text instead of any version of .doc. Software engineers should promote standards whenever possible, whatever language they use. -- Ludovic Brenta. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-11 22:14 ` Ludovic Brenta @ 2011-01-11 22:22 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-11 22:32 ` Ludovic Brenta 2011-01-11 22:38 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) ` (3 subsequent siblings) 4 siblings, 1 reply; 69+ messages in thread From: Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) @ 2011-01-11 22:22 UTC (permalink / raw) Le Tue, 11 Jan 2011 23:14:12 +0100, Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> a écrit: > No, I think we should tell them "tools should generate PDF or > OpenDocument, not a proprietary format"; this is true whatever language > the tools are written in. You could also be more pragmatic and note: 1) The amount of MS Windows and MS Applications users is great. 2) You are unlikely to convince them all. 3) If you convince some, the count of others will still be great. What about advocating while supporting the actual state of thing ? You can do “I am able in some limits to provide support for this and that, but be warned that ... and what about .... and did you ever minded that ... ?” Last but not least, anything widely used is near to always end into a de-facto standard. There may be planned obsolescence (I hate it as much as you do), but older format are still there and being more documented over the time. Look at MIDI specification as an example: its not open at all, there is no publicly accessible official documentation about it, but as it exist since long, it is documented in multiple place in a way which make it really usable. -- Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour les chiens. “I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-11 22:22 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) @ 2011-01-11 22:32 ` Ludovic Brenta 0 siblings, 0 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Ludovic Brenta @ 2011-01-11 22:32 UTC (permalink / raw) "Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) writes on comp.lang.ada: > Le Tue, 11 Jan 2011 23:14:12 +0100, Ludovic Brenta > <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> a écrit: >> No, I think we should tell them "tools should generate PDF or >> OpenDocument, not a proprietary format"; this is true whatever language >> the tools are written in. > You could also be more pragmatic and note: > 1) The amount of MS Windows and MS Applications users is great. > 2) You are unlikely to convince them all. > 3) If you convince some, the count of others will still be great. > > What about advocating while supporting the actual state of thing ? You > can do “I am able in some limits to provide support for this and that, > but be warned that ... and what about .... and did you ever minded > that ... ?” That's exactly the attitude I've had with customers before. So far I have always been able to convince them not to use .doc, and therefore I've never written any tool that generates .doc :) > Last but not least, anything widely used is near to always end into a > de-facto standard. There may be planned obsolescence (I hate it as > much as you do), but older format are still there and being more > documented over the time. Whether a standard is "de facto" or "de jure" is irrelevant, the relevant part is that a standard is not controlled by any single (dominant) vendor. > Look at MIDI specification as an example: its not open at all, there > is no publicly accessible official documentation about it, but as it > exist since long, it is documented in multiple place in a way which > make it really usable. That's because of multiple, independent implementations of the standard, i.e. the situation is the opposite of that of .doc. -- Ludovic Brenta. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-11 22:14 ` Ludovic Brenta 2011-01-11 22:22 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) @ 2011-01-11 22:38 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-12 1:37 ` Shark8 ` (2 subsequent siblings) 4 siblings, 0 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) @ 2011-01-11 22:38 UTC (permalink / raw) Le Tue, 11 Jan 2011 23:14:12 +0100, Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> a écrit: > * separation of form from content (documents should not contain the > definition of styles; they should point to shared style sheets). > > * compatibility with multiple (current and future) professional version > control systems providing the ability to branch, merge and tag > versioned documents and versioned style sheets by multiple people at > the same time; the only format which in my experience has this > property is Plain Text, possibly with markup! > > * compatibility with multiple (current and future) editors and viewers > on multiple (current and future) platforms; think of legal > requirements that documents be readable 100 years from now, and the > fact that the only extant documents that have proven to have this > property are on paper, parchment or papyrus. > > * compatibility with search and indexing software. > > * compatibility with cryptographic signatures, for authentication of > documents > > * compatibility with multiple encryption algorithms, current and future, > for secrecy. You must enjoy markup languages a lot so (XML, HTML, and the like). > I don't use office software much, I don't use Windows, and I would Neither I am, I feel this is too much presentation-oriented (and not enough semantic-oriented, as you noted). Moreover, these presentation oriented tools are more resource (hardware resources) and time (user time) consuming than what semantic-oriented editing is. But this is still the major case: people use office applications and want to use office applications. Presentation can be as a support of expression, and in the presentation area, MS Office is one of the most well know and used. Personal note: if you really want presentation and ease of creation and use and resilience, HTML+CSS (+SVG, optionally) is really the best. It happens sometime I wonder why people use so many different heavy formats while there is such a powerful and simple single one (and it can even be made dynamic for user interaction). -- Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour les chiens. “I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-11 22:14 ` Ludovic Brenta 2011-01-11 22:22 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-11 22:38 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) @ 2011-01-12 1:37 ` Shark8 2011-01-12 9:42 ` Stephen Leake 2011-01-12 22:53 ` Randy Brukardt 4 siblings, 0 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Shark8 @ 2011-01-12 1:37 UTC (permalink / raw) > BTW, I object to the use of Microsoft Word or any word processor for > professional documents in the first place. Professional document > management requires: > > * separation of form from content (documents should not contain the > definition of styles; they should point to shared style sheets). > > * compatibility with multiple (current and future) professional version > control systems providing the ability to branch, merge and tag > versioned documents and versioned style sheets by multiple people at > the same time; the only format which in my experience has this > property is Plain Text, possibly with markup! > > * compatibility with multiple (current and future) editors and viewers > on multiple (current and future) platforms; think of legal > requirements that documents be readable 100 years from now, and the > fact that the only extant documents that have proven to have this > property are on paper, parchment or papyrus. > > * compatibility with search and indexing software. > > * compatibility with cryptographic signatures, for authentication of > documents > > * compatibility with multiple encryption algorithms, current and future, > for secrecy. Interesting, I know Wordperfect's WPD format addresses, quite well, points 1 & 3. WP has/had a file Indexer *way* before version 11, addressing point 4. As for Points 5 & 6, WP's had encryption and signing since at least version 11. Version 2 is, perhaps, the only one missing... and even that might be debatible*. And it is a stable format: "Files created in WordPerfect 6.x, through 12 are structured the same, and will hereafter be referred to as WP12 files." -- http://www.corelconnected.com/html/files/WPFF_!DocumentStructure.htm "A key to WordPerfect's design is its streaming code architecture that parallels the formatting features of HTML and Cascading Style Sheets." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPerfect *From my WP11 Help-file: COLLABORATING ON A DOCUMENT It is often helpful to get opinions about a document before you send it to a wider audience. You can email the document to friends, co- workers, and editors for comments. The Review Document feature lets reviewers redline, highlight, and comment on your text. Use Document Compare to gather all the selected changes. If you must keep multiple copies of the same file, use Corel Versions to archive each one for reference. COMPARING DOCUMENTS You can compare a current version of a document with an earlier version to see what changes have been made. When comparing documents, you can generate a compare summary and a list of changes. A compare summary describes the color and the attributes used to display deletions and insertions. It also lists the number of deletions, insertions, and moves that were made. The list of changes details all of the changes made in the document. When you compare and review a document, the document that contains the comparison markings is opened in review mode. For more information about reviewing documents, see "Reviewing documents." In addition, you can restore a document to the way it was before the comparison. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-11 22:14 ` Ludovic Brenta ` (2 preceding siblings ...) 2011-01-12 1:37 ` Shark8 @ 2011-01-12 9:42 ` Stephen Leake 2011-01-12 22:53 ` Randy Brukardt 4 siblings, 0 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Stephen Leake @ 2011-01-12 9:42 UTC (permalink / raw) Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> writes: > > This is only half true. Their interest is to make their software > backward compatible (to ease migration to newer versions of their > software) but forward incompatible (to *force* migration to newer > versions of their software, aka planned obsolescence, and break > competitors' tools, aka total dominance). The only reason why they have > published some specifications (the "Microsoft Open Specification > Promise") is because "open" has become a buzzword and they want to be > "buzzword compliant" and combat the rise of actual open standards. > Remember: standards exist to protect customers against greedy vendors, > not the opposite. Me, I'll choose a Standard over a Promise every time. +10 > Like Stephe, I too hope that nobody writes a library that helps generate > .doc files. My reason reason is that such a tool would endorse the > proprietary format and help continue the dominance of evil proprietary > formats against standard ones. The same tool could be just as useful > writing PDF, DocBook, OpenDocument or even Plain Text instead of any > version of .doc. Software engineers should promote standards whenever > possible, whatever language they use. +10 -- -- Stephe ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-11 22:14 ` Ludovic Brenta ` (3 preceding siblings ...) 2011-01-12 9:42 ` Stephen Leake @ 2011-01-12 22:53 ` Randy Brukardt 2011-01-13 8:29 ` Ludovic Brenta 4 siblings, 1 reply; 69+ messages in thread From: Randy Brukardt @ 2011-01-12 22:53 UTC (permalink / raw) "Ludovic Brenta" <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> wrote in message news:87lj2rgkaz.fsf@ludovic-brenta.org... ... >> And I'm sure there are other tools out there (besides MS Office) that >> generate .doc files. > > Apart from Microsoft's own, I can't think of any such tool. Then again, > I don't use office software much, I don't use Windows, and I would > certainly not use, much less buy, a tool that locks my data into a > proprietary format like .doc. Maybe that's because I'm a software > engineer and not a lemming :) You're not trying very hard. :-) OpenOffice produces .doc files. I think most of the web-based "office suites" also do. All for pragmatic reasons. I've tried to take the attitude you are espousing and it has proven completely impractical. I've tried distributing documents in .odf format (the supposedly open format of OpenOffice) and hardly anyone seemed to be happy. It's a lot easier to distribute in .doc format (although I try to distribute read-only documents as .PDF). ... >> It may be that the need for writing a Word document is small enough >> that nobody has considered it worth their while to write a library >> like that. I can accept that as a reason. But the attitude that I >> thought I detected---"I hope [that nobody writes a library like >> that]"---is not one that I believe serves the Ada community. I >> apologize if I read too much into anything anyone said. > > Like Stephe, I too hope that nobody writes a library that helps generate > .doc files. My reason reason is that such a tool would endorse the > proprietary format and help continue the dominance of evil proprietary > formats against standard ones. The same tool could be just as useful > writing PDF, DocBook, OpenDocument or even Plain Text instead of any > version of .doc. Software engineers should promote standards whenever > possible, whatever language they use. I think the "library" should be able to generate any kind of file that you want. The ARM_Formatter uses an O-O design which allows plugging in any kind of output that you might dream up. So long as the clients write to that interface (and there is no alternative!), any sort of output can be made. Personally, I wouldn't want to try to directly create PDF files, because that would require doing detailed character layout, justification, pagination, indexing, table of contents, and the like. Doing these properly is a very complex job (I have experience with writing programs to output via typesetters back when I was much younger, and this is very difficult to get right). That's why I use MS Word and/or OpenOffice as an intermediary for creating the Ada standard and lots of other documents. If I was starting that today I would write directly to the .ODF format and let OpenOffice do all of the work (but that wasn't an option in 1998). Randy. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-12 22:53 ` Randy Brukardt @ 2011-01-13 8:29 ` Ludovic Brenta 0 siblings, 0 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Ludovic Brenta @ 2011-01-13 8:29 UTC (permalink / raw) Randy Brukardt wrote on comp.lang.ada: > "Ludovic Brenta" <ludo...@ludovic-brenta.org> wrote in message > > news:87lj2rgkaz.fsf@ludovic-brenta.org... > ... > >>> And I'm sure there are other tools out there (besides MS Office) that >>> generate .doc files. > >> Apart from Microsoft's own, I can't think of any such tool. Then again, >> I don't use office software much, I don't use Windows, and I would >> certainly not use, much less buy, a tool that locks my data into a >> proprietary format like .doc. Maybe that's because I'm a software >> engineer and not a lemming :) > > You're not trying very hard. :-) > OpenOffice produces .doc files. I think most of the web-based "office > suites" also do. All for pragmatic reasons. OK. The reason I forgot about them is because I was thinking of automated document generation, but your point is valid. > I've tried to take the attitude you are espousing and it has proven > completely impractical. I've tried distributing documents in .odf format > (the supposedly open format of OpenOffice) and hardly anyone seemed to be > happy. It's a lot easier to distribute in .doc format (although I try to > distribute read-only documents as .PDF). Yes, in my experience .PDF is the way to go. I generally *don't* want people to change the documents I send them anyway. > I think the "library" should be able to generate any kind of file that you > want. The ARM_Formatter uses an O-O design which allows plugging in any kind > of output that you might dream up. So long as the clients write to that > interface (and there is no alternative!), any sort of output can be made. Again, this argument is technically valid. But if you're going to generate documents, it is better to generate them in a standard format over a non-standard one. > Personally, I wouldn't want to try to directly create PDF files, because > that would require doing detailed character layout, justification, > pagination, indexing, table of contents, and the like. Doing these properly > is a very complex job (I have experience with writing programs to output via > typesetters back when I was much younger, and this is very difficult to get > right). That's why I use MS Word and/or OpenOffice as an intermediary for > creating the Ada standard and lots of other documents. If I was starting > that today I would write directly to the .ODF format and let OpenOffice do > all of the work (but that wasn't an option in 1998). I agree that typesetting is difficult. That's why I recommend using typesetting programs to do that job. Word processors are generally bad at handling automatically generated input. My preferred way would be to generate TeX, LaTeX or DocBook and use the appropriate system do the typesetting for me. -- Ludovic Brenta. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-11 20:47 ` Adam Beneschan 2011-01-11 22:05 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-11 22:14 ` Ludovic Brenta @ 2011-01-11 22:14 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-12 9:36 ` Pascal Obry 3 siblings, 0 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) @ 2011-01-11 22:14 UTC (permalink / raw) Le Tue, 11 Jan 2011 21:47:58 +0100, Adam Beneschan <adam@irvine.com> a écrit: > As for Microsoft using a "non-standard, proprietary and ever-changing > format", there seems to be some format information available at > > http://www.microsoft.com/interop/docs/officebinaryformats.mspx Well, let's go for more, as it's somewhat the topic and as Ada novelists enjoy specifications a lot. An extract of my bookmarks on the topic of data formats in the large: http://www.fileinfo.com/ http://www.fileformat.info/index.htm http://www.wotsit.org/ http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/ http://standards.freedesktop.org/shared-mime-info-spec/shared-mime-info-spec-latest.html http://fret.sourceforge.net/ http://www.astro.keele.ac.uk/oldusers/rno/Computing/File_magic.html http://sourceware.org/gdb/current/onlinedocs/stabs.html#SEC_Top http://www.fileformat.info/mirror/egff/index.htm http://www.martinreddy.net/gfx/ http://www.fileformat.info/format/bmp/egff.htm http://www.edm2.com/0107/os2bmp.html http://www.library.cornell.edu/preservation/tutorial-french/presentation/table7-1.html (the last is French only, sorry) -- Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour les chiens. “I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-11 20:47 ` Adam Beneschan ` (2 preceding siblings ...) 2011-01-11 22:14 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) @ 2011-01-12 9:36 ` Pascal Obry 2011-01-12 13:02 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 3 siblings, 1 reply; 69+ messages in thread From: Pascal Obry @ 2011-01-12 9:36 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Adam Beneschan Adam, I think Ludivic concerns are not in the tool itself but the data. I was a Windows user, I want to use the best tool to do the job (being free or propietary - I paid for Lightroom as there is no equivalent in the Open Source domain at the moment). As I said no problem. But when I have the choice I won't be using a tool that also makes all my data proprietary. The data are mine, why should I pay year after year to be able to use them? I've spent hours on typing guitar partitions, the tools is not there anymore, I've lost everything (true story), I had made many documents using Word hopefully there is some free tool to read this format otherwise I would have lost everything too. Likewise with Excel, I've also lost genealogy work done on a proprietary tool... I won't even try to count how many hours I've lost with all those tools :( Let's take Lightroom that I'm using at the moment. The data to develop the photos are so tied to Lightroom that I will probably have to keep Lightroom forever :( I know but today I have no choice, it is a shame but I need to get the job done... So all in all I fully agree with Ludovic, be sure to use, whenever it is possible, free and standard formats. Pascal. -- --|------------------------------------------------------ --| Pascal Obry Team-Ada Member --| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE --|------------------------------------------------------ --| http://www.obry.net - http://v2p.fr.eu.org --| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination" --| --| gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-key F949BD3B ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-12 9:36 ` Pascal Obry @ 2011-01-12 13:02 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-12 14:16 ` Pascal Obry 0 siblings, 1 reply; 69+ messages in thread From: Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) @ 2011-01-12 13:02 UTC (permalink / raw) Le Wed, 12 Jan 2011 10:36:02 +0100, Pascal Obry <pascal@obry.net> a écrit: > I paid for Lightroom as there is no equivalent in the Open > Source domain at the moment [...] > > [...] > > Let's take Lightroom that I'm using at the moment. The data to develop > the photos are so tied to Lightroom that I will probably have to keep > Lightroom forever :( I know but today I have no choice, it is a shame > but I need to get the job done... You pointed an interesting point: free as speech is more important as fee as beer ;) Most users feel and seek for the opposite, and for those, MS Office can be free as beer when it is cracked, and then either OpenOffice or MS Office looks the same good alternative, as both are free as beer. P.S. A quick search on the web to try to help you, gave this: http://darktable.sourceforge.net/ I do not like this obsession to clone, as found in many software project (just look at the name), but if this ever can help you, that's for one good at least... -- Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour les chiens. “I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-12 13:02 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) @ 2011-01-12 14:16 ` Pascal Obry 0 siblings, 0 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Pascal Obry @ 2011-01-12 14:16 UTC (permalink / raw) To: "Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)" Yannick, > P.S. A quick search on the web to try to help you, gave this: > http://darktable.sourceforge.net/ I do not like this obsession to clone, > as found in many software project (just look at the name), but if this > ever can help you, that's for one good at least... Thanks for the link. I indeed build darktable daily from master branch. But I can tell you that it is far from Lightroom in terms of usability and most important in terms of noise reduction. The Ligthroom RAW demosaicing algorithm is far supperior especially at high ISO. But I also think that Darktable will be a good challenger at some point... But this is getting really off-topic. Pascal. -- --|------------------------------------------------------ --| Pascal Obry Team-Ada Member --| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE --|------------------------------------------------------ --| http://www.obry.net - http://v2p.fr.eu.org --| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination" --| --| gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-key F949BD3B ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-11 8:51 ` Stephen Leake 2011-01-11 15:37 ` Adam Beneschan @ 2011-01-12 9:00 ` Maciej Sobczak 2011-01-12 9:44 ` sjw ` (2 more replies) 1 sibling, 3 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Maciej Sobczak @ 2011-01-12 9:00 UTC (permalink / raw) On Jan 11, 9:51 am, Stephen Leake <stephen_le...@stephe-leake.org> wrote: > > As long as we're on sort of a similar subject, I've wondered several > > times if there are Ada libraries for creating Microsoft Word > > documents. > > I hope not :) Without getting involved into the discussion that follows, I would propose everybody to read this: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/02/19.html The most important part starts with "Let Office do the heavy work for you", but the whole article is worth reading. Some years ago I have been working on the application that was supposed to produce Excel documents. I have done it via COM interfaces and consider it to be the only reasonable solution for this kind of tasks. The file format might be non-standard, intentionally obfuscated, evil and whatever you call it, but the API is documented and works very well. Reimplementing the internal file format engine is pointless if the document can be already produced at the level of its logical content. Now, the question is how to access COM interfaces from Ada, but I believe this problem is already solved, as it is much more generic than producing Word files. The article describes alternative solutions as well, but none of them is even close to writing Word files directly. -- Maciej Sobczak * www.msobczak.com * www.inspirel.com ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-12 9:00 ` Maciej Sobczak @ 2011-01-12 9:44 ` sjw 2011-01-12 10:44 ` Manuel Collado 2011-01-12 10:04 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov 2011-01-12 23:14 ` Randy Brukardt 2 siblings, 1 reply; 69+ messages in thread From: sjw @ 2011-01-12 9:44 UTC (permalink / raw) On Jan 12, 9:00 am, Maciej Sobczak <see.my.homep...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Jan 11, 9:51 am, Stephen Leake <stephen_le...@stephe-leake.org> > wrote: > > > > As long as we're on sort of a similar subject, I've wondered several > > > times if there are Ada libraries for creating Microsoft Word > > > documents. > > > I hope not :) > > Without getting involved into the discussion that follows, I would > propose everybody to read this: > > http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/02/19.html > > The most important part starts with "Let Office do the heavy work for > you", but the whole article is worth reading. I especially liked this bit: "If you really want to generate fancy formatted Word documents, your best bet is to create an RTF document. Everything that Word can do can be expressed in RTF, but it’s a text format, not binary, so you can change things in the RTF document and it’ll still work. You can create a nicely formatted document with placeholders in Word, save as RTF, and then using simple text substitution, replace the placeholders on the fly. Now you have an RTF document that every version of Word will open happily." ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-12 9:44 ` sjw @ 2011-01-12 10:44 ` Manuel Collado 2011-01-12 13:12 ` Georg Bauhaus 0 siblings, 1 reply; 69+ messages in thread From: Manuel Collado @ 2011-01-12 10:44 UTC (permalink / raw) El 12/01/2011 10:44, sjw escribi�: > On Jan 12, 9:00 am, Maciej Sobczak<see.my.homep...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On Jan 11, 9:51 am, Stephen Leake<stephen_le...@stephe-leake.org> >> wrote: >> >>>> As long as we're on sort of a similar subject, I've wondered several >>>> times if there are Ada libraries for creating Microsoft Word >>>> documents. >> >>> I hope not :) >> >> Without getting involved into the discussion that follows, I would >> propose everybody to read this: >> >> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/02/19.html >> >> The most important part starts with "Let Office do the heavy work for >> you", but the whole article is worth reading. > > I especially liked this bit: > > "If you really want to generate fancy formatted Word documents, your > best bet is to create an RTF document. Everything that Word can do > can > be expressed in RTF, but it�s a text format, not binary, so you can > change things in the RTF document and it�ll still work. You can > create > a nicely formatted document with placeholders in Word, save as RTF, > and then using simple text substitution, replace the placeholders on > the fly. Now you have an RTF document that every version of Word will > open happily." Another possibility is to use the "Microsoft Office XML formats": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_XML_formats Any general-purpose XML tool or library can handle them. -- Manuel Collado - http://lml.ls.fi.upm.es/~mcollado ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-12 10:44 ` Manuel Collado @ 2011-01-12 13:12 ` Georg Bauhaus 0 siblings, 0 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Georg Bauhaus @ 2011-01-12 13:12 UTC (permalink / raw) On 12.01.11 11:44, Manuel Collado wrote: > El 12/01/2011 10:44, sjw escribi�: >> On Jan 12, 9:00 am, Maciej Sobczak<see.my.homep...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> On Jan 11, 9:51 am, Stephen Leake<stephen_le...@stephe-leake.org> >>> wrote: >>> >>>>> As long as we're on sort of a similar subject, I've wondered several >>>>> times if there are Ada libraries for creating Microsoft Word >>>>> documents. >>> >>>> I hope not :) >>> >>> Without getting involved into the discussion that follows, I would >>> propose everybody to read this: >>> >>> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/02/19.html >>> > Another possibility is to use the "Microsoft Office XML formats": > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_XML_formats > > Any general-purpose XML tool or library can handle them. Handling Office Open XML in full means to tackle a rather extensive specification. ISO announces Part 1 of ISO/IEC 29500:2008 Office Open XML File Formats to have 5560 pages. XML frees us from binary representations and machine dependence. However, the meaning of elements, attributes, rules etc. does not fit into a single brain, in a single life. (See Joel Spolsky's article.) You can add the argument about size of specification to Dmitry's remarks about Microsoft's ongoing productivity when it comes to outputting new, more capable "formats" to everyone. Yet, the notion of a document is fairly simple one. Why would the simple idea have to be complicated by injecting every possible twist from the history of PC document exchange? Because the functioning of politics and management is known by any competent computer software consultant/salesperson/politician. If you are one, you know how to produce software to be sold to the target group: Microsoft style. It's admirable. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-12 9:00 ` Maciej Sobczak 2011-01-12 9:44 ` sjw @ 2011-01-12 10:04 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov 2011-01-12 21:25 ` Maciej Sobczak 2011-01-12 23:14 ` Randy Brukardt 2 siblings, 1 reply; 69+ messages in thread From: Dmitry A. Kazakov @ 2011-01-12 10:04 UTC (permalink / raw) On Wed, 12 Jan 2011 01:00:42 -0800 (PST), Maciej Sobczak wrote: > Some years ago I have been working on the application that was > supposed to produce Excel documents. I have done it via COM interfaces > and consider it to be the only reasonable solution for this kind of > tasks. You make a valid point from the software design point of view. Unfortunately Microsoft switches interfaces at the speed only slighter slower than the formats. Remember DDE, OLE? -- Regards, Dmitry A. Kazakov http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-12 10:04 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov @ 2011-01-12 21:25 ` Maciej Sobczak 2011-01-12 21:57 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov 0 siblings, 1 reply; 69+ messages in thread From: Maciej Sobczak @ 2011-01-12 21:25 UTC (permalink / raw) On Jan 12, 11:04 am, "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mail...@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote: > You make a valid point from the software design point of view. > Unfortunately Microsoft switches interfaces at the speed only slighter > slower than the formats. Remember DDE, OLE? Still, if your target is a Word file, this is the most stable option. More stable than the file format itself. I wouldn't be surprised to see my old code still working properly. In any case, we can think about this issue in this way: if our customer already enjoys paying Microsoft every so often for Office upgrades, then he might also enjoy paying *us* for repeatedly rewriting the document generation engine within the system that we maintain for him. Right? ;-) -- Maciej Sobczak * http://www.inspirel.com ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-12 21:25 ` Maciej Sobczak @ 2011-01-12 21:57 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov 0 siblings, 0 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Dmitry A. Kazakov @ 2011-01-12 21:57 UTC (permalink / raw) On Wed, 12 Jan 2011 13:25:42 -0800 (PST), Maciej Sobczak wrote: > On Jan 12, 11:04�am, "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mail...@dmitry-kazakov.de> > wrote: > >> You make a valid point from the software design point of view. >> Unfortunately Microsoft switches interfaces at the speed only slighter >> slower than the formats. Remember DDE, OLE? > > Still, if your target is a Word file, this is the most stable option. Some time ago it was DDE. > More stable than the file format itself. I wouldn't be surprised to > see my old code still working properly. Well, it depends. An unrelated example, but for the sake of argument, if you merely change the compiler from VC2008 to VC2010, your C++ program will stop working under Windows NT4.0,95,98...2000. Instead investigating possible reasons why, let us just note this. The moral is anything is possible and anything is likely. > In any case, we can think about this issue in this way: if our > customer already enjoys paying Microsoft every so often for Office > upgrades, then he might also enjoy paying *us* for repeatedly > rewriting the document generation engine within the system that we > maintain for him. Right? ;-) Not really. Surely we don't write *.doc files, I cannot imagine a customer, who would request that. But we indeed write *.xls files (or what is the extension now) on many occasions. Customers don't pay for that. They expect it working, so it is our expenses in the end. The problem is not that great, because most of the customers keep on using Windows XP and aren't affected by the "upgrades." But sooner or later the next turn will come. -- Regards, Dmitry A. Kazakov http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-12 9:00 ` Maciej Sobczak 2011-01-12 9:44 ` sjw 2011-01-12 10:04 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov @ 2011-01-12 23:14 ` Randy Brukardt 2011-01-13 8:33 ` Ludovic Brenta 2011-01-15 15:04 ` Elias Salomão Helou Neto 2 siblings, 2 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Randy Brukardt @ 2011-01-12 23:14 UTC (permalink / raw) "Maciej Sobczak" <see.my.homepage@gmail.com> wrote in message news:a646191e-6671-4c3a-ab9a-ba20d4bba9bf@r29g2000yqj.googlegroups.com... >On Jan 11, 9:51 am, Stephen Leake <stephen_le...@stephe-leake.org> wrote: > >> > As long as we're on sort of a similar subject, I've wondered several >> > times if there are Ada libraries for creating Microsoft Word >> > documents. >> >> I hope not :) > >Without getting involved into the discussion that follows, I would >propose everybody to read this: > >http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/02/19.html > >The most important part starts with "Let Office do the heavy work for >you", but the whole article is worth reading. It's nice to see that his conclusion is the same as mine. I find the suggestion to use .rtf more compelling than "let Office do the work for you" simply because not everyone has Office installed. (I don't on my newer computers, for example.) It would be useful to note that .rtf files are less stable than .doc files. We continued to have bizarre formatting problems with the Ada standard until someone noticed that they went away if we took the .rtf files and resaved them as .doc files. Moreover, an attempt to save the files as .rtf crashes Word (all versions that I've tried). But even with those problems, it's a whole lot easier to write .rtf and generate .pdf from that than to try to do it in one step. Moreover, that allows the input to the formatter to be plain text, with all of the version control advantages that entails. (And version control is very important for a large, long-lived document like the Ada standard.) And it allows the creation of multiple related documents (RM and AARM) from a single source base. And we can also automatically create some of the annexes from the source (like the attribute, pragma, and syntax annexes). Randy. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-12 23:14 ` Randy Brukardt @ 2011-01-13 8:33 ` Ludovic Brenta 2011-01-13 9:11 ` Georg Bauhaus 2011-01-13 20:40 ` Randy Brukardt 2011-01-15 15:04 ` Elias Salomão Helou Neto 1 sibling, 2 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Ludovic Brenta @ 2011-01-13 8:33 UTC (permalink / raw) Randy Brukardt wrote on comp.lang.ada: > It would be useful to note that .rtf files are less stable than .doc files. > We continued to have bizarre formatting problems with the Ada standard until > someone noticed that they went away if we took the .rtf files and resaved > them as .doc files. Moreover, an attempt to save the files as .rtf crashes > Word (all versions that I've tried). But even with those problems, it's a > whole lot easier to write .rtf and generate .pdf from that than to try to do > it in one step. > > Moreover, that allows the input to the formatter to be plain text, with all > of the version control advantages that entails. (And version control is very > important for a large, long-lived document like the Ada standard.) And it > allows the creation of multiple related documents (RM and AARM) from a > single source base. And we can also automatically create some of the annexes > from the source (like the attribute, pragma, and syntax annexes). I see we're on the same wavelength as regards professional document management: plain text, version control, separation of style from content, etc. Personally I would have chosen Texinfo, TeX, LaTeX or DocBooc instead of RTF. These formats are not ISO standards but they are stable and open. It is possible that generating HTML and PDF from such sources was not yet an option in 1998, though. -- Ludovic Brenta. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-13 8:33 ` Ludovic Brenta @ 2011-01-13 9:11 ` Georg Bauhaus 2011-01-13 20:40 ` Randy Brukardt 1 sibling, 0 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Georg Bauhaus @ 2011-01-13 9:11 UTC (permalink / raw) On 1/13/11 9:33 AM, Ludovic Brenta wrote: > Randy Brukardt wrote on comp.lang.ada: >> It would be useful to note that .rtf files are less stable than .doc files. >> We continued to have bizarre formatting problems with the Ada standard until >> someone noticed that they went away if we took the .rtf files and resaved >> them as .doc files. Moreover, an attempt to save the files as .rtf crashes >> Word (all versions that I've tried). But even with those problems, it's a >> whole lot easier to write .rtf and generate .pdf from that than to try to do >> it in one step. > Personally I would have chosen Texinfo, TeX, LaTeX or DocBooc instead > of RTF. These formats are not ISO standards but they are stable and > open. It is possible that generating HTML and PDF from such sources > was not yet an option in 1998, though. DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) is worth mentioning. It is unlike the book centric macros, and unlike DocBook. DITA, offering a very simple set of element definitions (XML), is built around the notions of a topic, how to connect topics, and how to specialize a general topic (concepts, how-tos, step-by-step instructions, ...). I have never needed to specialize what is already there, though. "The point of the XML-based Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is to create modular technical documents that are easy to reuse with varied display and delivery mechanisms, such as helpsets, manuals, hierarchical summaries for small-screen devices, and so on." (From "Specializing topic types in DITA", http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-dita2/ ) Editing software can output to all kinds of files, including .odt. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-13 8:33 ` Ludovic Brenta 2011-01-13 9:11 ` Georg Bauhaus @ 2011-01-13 20:40 ` Randy Brukardt 2011-01-13 22:34 ` Georg Bauhaus 2011-01-13 23:59 ` Edward Fish 1 sibling, 2 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Randy Brukardt @ 2011-01-13 20:40 UTC (permalink / raw) "Ludovic Brenta" <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> wrote in message news:9c34f2cf-cb2c-4433-a6f7-b4c19d842fee@t35g2000yqj.googlegroups.com... > Randy Brukardt wrote on comp.lang.ada: >> It would be useful to note that .rtf files are less stable than .doc >> files. >> We continued to have bizarre formatting problems with the Ada standard >> until >> someone noticed that they went away if we took the .rtf files and resaved >> them as .doc files. Moreover, an attempt to save the files as .rtf >> crashes >> Word (all versions that I've tried). But even with those problems, it's a >> whole lot easier to write .rtf and generate .pdf from that than to try to >> do >> it in one step. >> >> Moreover, that allows the input to the formatter to be plain text, with >> all >> of the version control advantages that entails. (And version control is >> very >> important for a large, long-lived document like the Ada standard.) And it >> allows the creation of multiple related documents (RM and AARM) from a >> single source base. And we can also automatically create some of the >> annexes >> from the source (like the attribute, pragma, and syntax annexes). > > I see we're on the same wavelength as regards professional document > management: plain text, version control, separation of style from > content, etc. > > Personally I would have chosen Texinfo, TeX, LaTeX or DocBooc instead > of RTF. These formats are not ISO standards but they are stable and > open. It is possible that generating HTML and PDF from such sources > was not yet an option in 1998, though. In hindsight, I might have as well. But part of the reason that I chose .rtf was because that was one of the few formats accepted by ISO for standards. .Doc being the other. (Please insert joke here about an International Standards Organization requiring documents in a propriatary, non standard format. Everyone else has. :-) Interestingly, the *actual* format that the Ada standards have been submitted in has been .PDF. Although ISO recently tried to again insist on all documents being in their own closed template for Microsoft Office and in .Doc files. Which only works with US versions of Office. What's "International" about that?? Anyway, that has again been beaten back - the supposed reason that they wanted to do this is so that they could modify the standards if they needed to do so. But editors don't want ISO secretaries mucking with their standards! What a wonderful way to have a disaster (imagine deleting "not" from some text). Randy. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-13 20:40 ` Randy Brukardt @ 2011-01-13 22:34 ` Georg Bauhaus 2011-01-14 6:26 ` Thomas Løcke 2011-01-13 23:59 ` Edward Fish 1 sibling, 1 reply; 69+ messages in thread From: Georg Bauhaus @ 2011-01-13 22:34 UTC (permalink / raw) On 1/13/11 9:40 PM, Randy Brukardt wrote: > Interestingly, the *actual* format that the Ada standards have been > submitted in has been .PDF. Although ISO recently tried to again insist on > all documents being in their own closed template for Microsoft Office and in > .Doc files. Which only works with US versions of Office. What's > "International" about that?? Anyway, that has again been beaten back - the > supposed reason that they wanted to do this is so that they could modify the > standards if they needed to do so. But editors don't want ISO secretaries > mucking with their standards! What a wonderful way to have a disaster > (imagine deleting "not" from some text). It is interesting to read the stories about ISO delegates from northern Europe around the time .doc/OOXML was suggested as an ISO standard. Delegates have voted Yes although their national technical committees had tended to vote No---the committees were then staffed by more willing members that would understand the advantages of .doc much better than the original members ... The non-technical content of iWoz is illustrative, I think. It is descriptive of what perhaps explains the special respect that some Big Silicon Entrepreneurs have for standards organizations. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-13 22:34 ` Georg Bauhaus @ 2011-01-14 6:26 ` Thomas Løcke 0 siblings, 0 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Thomas Løcke @ 2011-01-14 6:26 UTC (permalink / raw) On 2011-01-13 23:34, Georg Bauhaus wrote: > It is interesting to read the stories about ISO delegates from > northern Europe around the time .doc/OOXML was suggested as an > ISO standard. > Delegates have voted Yes although their national technical committees > had tended to vote No---the committees were then staffed by more > willing members that would understand the advantages of .doc > much better than the original members ... Coming from Denmark, this was a _very_ embarrassing process to bear witness to. It flies in the face of this study: http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2010/results Denmark is a Microsoft haven. For some odd reason(s) that one company have a very strong influence on the danish politicians/decision makers. -- Regards, Thomas Løcke Email: tl at ada-dk.org Web: http://ada-dk.org http://identi.ca/thomaslocke ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-13 20:40 ` Randy Brukardt 2011-01-13 22:34 ` Georg Bauhaus @ 2011-01-13 23:59 ` Edward Fish 1 sibling, 0 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Edward Fish @ 2011-01-13 23:59 UTC (permalink / raw) On Jan 13, 1:40 pm, "Randy Brukardt" <ra...@rrsoftware.com> wrote: > > But editors don't want ISO secretaries > mucking with their standards! What a wonderful way to have a disaster > (imagine deleting "not" from some text). > > Randy. Howabout something like replacing the terminal 'and' in a list with 'or' so that said list fits on one line? ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-12 23:14 ` Randy Brukardt 2011-01-13 8:33 ` Ludovic Brenta @ 2011-01-15 15:04 ` Elias Salomão Helou Neto 2011-01-15 17:45 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-16 1:27 ` Georg Bauhaus 1 sibling, 2 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Elias Salomão Helou Neto @ 2011-01-15 15:04 UTC (permalink / raw) > Interestingly, the *actual* format that the Ada standards have been > submitted in has been .PDF. Although ISO recently tried to again insist on > all documents being in their own closed template for Microsoft Office and in > .Doc files. Which only works with US versions of Office. What's > "International" about that?? Anyway, that has again been beaten back - the > supposed reason that they wanted to do this is so that they could modify the > standards if they needed to do so. But editors don't want ISO secretaries > mucking with their standards! What a wonderful way to have a disaster > (imagine deleting "not" from some text). I fail to understand how come public institutions use proprietary formats for their document exchanges. There should be a law against it. I get sick whenever I get a .doc file to fill in. If it is possible I return it to the sender asking for a PDF form instead. With .tex, changing the formatting of the whole document is a breeze. And it can be done without even having access to the contents files, perfect for ISO editors. Creating hyperlinked summaries, indices and bibliographies is as easy as 1,2,3. Not to mention vector graphics (can you even consider doing that with, say, .rtf?), math formulas and so on. Now, for automatic document generation, both from practical and technical viewpoints, there is no chance for .rtf/.doc/.odt against .tex as an intermediate format for generating .pdf. Sorry if this will sound a little bit harsh, but anyone who would choose one of the three former against the latter, simply doesn't know what is doing. Anything that can be done by .rtf/.doc/.odt can be done with LaTeX, but the opposite is just not true. If you intend to get to pdf through an intermediate format, tex is just the way to go. >"The point of the XML-based Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) > is to create modular technical documents that are easy to reuse with > varied display and delivery mechanisms, such as helpsets, manuals, > hierarchical summaries for small-screen devices, and so on." I have never heard about DITA before, but I must mention that there is nothing book-centric about TeX itself, therefore your objection clearly does not apply here. TeX is about beautiful typesetting and it is a fully fledged macro language, so you can get about anything you want from it. Elias ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-15 15:04 ` Elias Salomão Helou Neto @ 2011-01-15 17:45 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-15 23:58 ` Georg Bauhaus ` (2 more replies) 2011-01-16 1:27 ` Georg Bauhaus 1 sibling, 3 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) @ 2011-01-15 17:45 UTC (permalink / raw) Le Sat, 15 Jan 2011 16:04:08 +0100, Elias Salomão Helou Neto <eshneto@gmail.com> a écrit: > Now, for automatic document generation, both from practical and > technical viewpoints, there is no chance for .rtf/.doc/.odt > against .tex as an intermediate format for generating .pdf. Sorry if > this will sound a little bit harsh, but anyone who would choose one of > the three former against the latter, simply doesn't know what is > doing. I understand the advocacy, but you still need a source for the document. PDF is not a source, and TeX/LaTeX are neither good for that purpose (no more than RTF is), added the already pointed fact of lack of real support for Unicode (unless you use the 1GB install of an application I forget the name) which is a must-have for many text based work (especially if you need multiple languages in the same document, like Arabic + French, Japanese + Italian, and so on). This is not readable neither. Better XML as source than TeX/LaTex there. Some document model exist for math notations, and anyway, the nature of XML allow you to write a document without even the need for a document model reference (you may rely on good tag name and not too much obfuscating attributes). About MS Office document in administrations, at least in france, PDF is every where. I receive e-mail bills in PDF, and all official documents you can order on-line on administration's web sites, are PDF (do not know for other countries, while pretty sure it's the same in all of the Europe). About PDF now: I remember when it appears in the 199Xs, this was an ogre, consuming too much CPU power and memory. This was best used for printing than for on-screen reading (the HD was scrapping and grinding as much as you were scrolling your document). Word documents, on the opposite, was opening fast and with fluidity. This may explain why MS Word document was the first favorite at that time. Later and now, with memory and CPU speed increases (I hope 1GHz CPU and 1GB memory is at last enough to open a PDF smoothly), PDF become more usable for on-screen reading (this is planned to be one of the favorite format for e-Books). Just to say there are reasons for why things was what they use to be (on both parts of the trial). -- Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour les chiens. “I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-15 17:45 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) @ 2011-01-15 23:58 ` Georg Bauhaus 2011-01-16 2:49 ` Elias Salomão Helou Neto 2011-01-16 11:59 ` Simon Wright 2 siblings, 0 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Georg Bauhaus @ 2011-01-15 23:58 UTC (permalink / raw) On 1/15/11 6:45 PM, Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) wrote: > About PDF now: I remember when it appears in the 199Xs, this was an ogre, consuming too much CPU power and memory. This was best used for printing than for on-screen reading (the HD was scrapping and grinding as much as you were scrolling your document). Word documents, on the opposite, was opening fast and with fluidity. This may explain why MS Word document was the first favorite at that time. Later and now, with memory and CPU speed increases (I hope 1GHz CPU and 1GB memory is at last enough to open a PDF smoothly), PDF become more usable for on-screen reading (this is planned to be one of the favorite format for e-Books). Somewhere on the quoted line you say that PDF was slow in 199X. I have seen Display Postscript running nicely on high end PC hardware of the time. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-15 17:45 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-15 23:58 ` Georg Bauhaus @ 2011-01-16 2:49 ` Elias Salomão Helou Neto 2011-01-16 3:21 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-16 11:59 ` Simon Wright 2 siblings, 1 reply; 69+ messages in thread From: Elias Salomão Helou Neto @ 2011-01-16 2:49 UTC (permalink / raw) <eshn...@gmail.com> a écrit: > > Now, for automatic document generation, both from practical and > I understand the advocacy, but you still need a source for the document. PDFis not a source, and TeX/LaTeX are neither good for that purpose (no > more than RTF is), added the already pointed fact of lack of real support > for Unicode (unless you use the 1GB install of an application I forget the > name) which is a must-have for many text based work (especially if you > need multiple languages in the same document, like Arabic + French, > Japanese + Italian, and so on). This is not readable neither. You are right. In fact, .rtf is a better source in most cases, since we can't hope to have a secretary who knows TeX. But I meant that in the context of an automatic generated intermediate format. > Better XML as source than TeX/LaTex there. Some document model exist for I know very much about TeX and very little about XML. If you know equally well about both then you may be right. Just wondering if you're not saying that only because you know XML better than TeX. > About MS Office document in administrations, at least in france,PDFis > every where. I receive e-mail bills inPDF, and all official documents you > can order on-line on administration's web sites, arePDF(do not know for > other countries, while pretty sure it's the same in all of the Europe). Congratulations to French people. I'm at Brazil and .doc is everywhere. I don't care how the document is generated, but how it is exchanged. Why not convert the stuff into a PDF so that everyone can read it? > AboutPDFnow: I remember when it appears in the 199Xs, this was an ogre, > consuming too much CPU power and memory. This was best used for printing > than for on-screen reading (the HD was scrapping and grinding as much as > you were scrolling your document). This was likely an implementation issue. PDF documents have a precisely located object table, which contains the position of every object in the file and the format is page based. When you jump to a page it does not need to read the hole stuff to render it. It is in contrast with PostScript, which does require everything to be rendered from the beginning of the document. Still, by that time, PS renderers were faster than their PDF counterparts. Elias. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-16 2:49 ` Elias Salomão Helou Neto @ 2011-01-16 3:21 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 0 siblings, 0 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) @ 2011-01-16 3:21 UTC (permalink / raw) Le Sun, 16 Jan 2011 03:49:09 +0100, Elias Salomão Helou Neto <eshneto@gmail.com> a écrit: > I know very much about TeX and very little about XML. If you know > equally well about both then you may be right. Just wondering if > you're not saying that only because you know XML better than TeX. You could know easily (about XML), as that is rather simple: that's a standard serialization format. About document models description, there are multiple standards (and may be local standard, like me, I use my own), each with a particular strength I know a bit about TeX and derivative (mainly LaTeX). Sure you know it far more than me. > This was likely an implementation issue. PDF documents have a > precisely located object table, which contains the position of every > object in the file and the format is page based. When you jump to a > page it does not need to read the hole stuff to render it. It is in > contrast with PostScript, which does require everything to be rendered > from the beginning of the document. Still, by that time, PS renderers > were faster than their PDF counterparts. > > Elias. Did not knew that. Thanks for the historical point. Time to say there is something I miss in PDF: the ability to link to a particular part of a document from the outside. HTML and the likes have identifiers (which can identify a part of a document) which you can link to using URL fragments (you know, the “#any-identifier” at the end of some URLs). As explained in another reply to this thread, I am seeking for a standard convention, which could among other things, be used to write in comment and interpreted by IDE and editors, to link to others source files or related documents. But if you cannot link directly to a particular part of a document, that is painful if ever the document is big enough. Think about the Ada reference, which is a rather big document. From time to time, you may see replies in this Usenet, with a link to a section of the standard, and many time to a particular point of a section. All these links are to HTML version of the reference. You cannot link this way to a PDF version of the standard, and that is what is missing to these formats, which I believe are better suited for printing than for what we could expect in a computer environment. -- Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour les chiens. “I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-15 17:45 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-15 23:58 ` Georg Bauhaus 2011-01-16 2:49 ` Elias Salomão Helou Neto @ 2011-01-16 11:59 ` Simon Wright 2011-01-16 12:57 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov 2011-01-16 20:34 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2 siblings, 2 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Simon Wright @ 2011-01-16 11:59 UTC (permalink / raw) "Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr> writes: > Better XML as source than TeX/LaTex there. Some document model exist > for math notations, and anyway, the nature of XML allow you to write a > document without even the need for a document model reference (you may > rely on good tag name and not too much obfuscating attributes). I don't see how you can recommend free-structured XML. XML (in this context) is, or could be, a way of allocating the content of a document to its appropriate place in the structure of the document using in-text markup. This leads to two questions: (a) what is the structure of the document? (b) what markup are you going to use? Suppose we decide to have books with chapters with paragraphs. Are we going to say <book> <chapter> <paragraph> or <livre> <chapitre> <paragraphe> ??? Someone in this thread asked whether you could expect to find a secretary who understood [La]TeX. I'm pretty sure it used to be possible; but I wouldn't have thought that was the answer, instead you'd expect some front-end document preparation system (Wikipedia are going this way, I believe, to reduce the fear that inexperienced users feel when seeing MediaWiki markup for the first time). ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-16 11:59 ` Simon Wright @ 2011-01-16 12:57 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov 2011-01-16 14:25 ` (see below) 2011-01-16 15:33 ` Simon Wright 2011-01-16 20:34 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 1 sibling, 2 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Dmitry A. Kazakov @ 2011-01-16 12:57 UTC (permalink / raw) On Sun, 16 Jan 2011 11:59:18 +0000, Simon Wright wrote: > Suppose we decide to have books with chapters with paragraphs. Are we > going to say > > <book> > <chapter> > <paragraph> Let's not. Documents have no such structure. When imposed on, this structure makes usage of the documents very difficult. I have to work with many documents on networking issues, they are mostly in PDF. These are almost unusable *because* they are 1) in PDF, 2) structured as "books," which they are not, and never should have been. A hierarchy of text segments (chapter, paragraph etc) is a possible view of the document, of which importance is quite minor and becoming more and more negligible, because documents are never read sequentially. Document is not a fiction novel. The structure of pages is also a view, a harmful view, because pages have nothing to do either with the content or with the rendering on the display. -- Regards, Dmitry A. Kazakov http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-16 12:57 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov @ 2011-01-16 14:25 ` (see below) 2011-01-16 16:43 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov 2011-01-16 15:33 ` Simon Wright 1 sibling, 1 reply; 69+ messages in thread From: (see below) @ 2011-01-16 14:25 UTC (permalink / raw) On 16/01/2011 12:57, in article olao885lpaij$.1273idj6ytssc$.dlg@40tude.net, "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote: > On Sun, 16 Jan 2011 11:59:18 +0000, Simon Wright wrote: > >> Suppose we decide to have books with chapters with paragraphs. Are we >> going to say >> >> <book> >> <chapter> >> <paragraph> > > Let's not. Documents have no such structure. When imposed on, this > structure makes usage of the documents very difficult. ... There was a fad in the '70s for program editors that worked on the basis of a similar structure, but derived from the syntax of the programming language. I never used any of them for more than half an hour because the kinds of things one wants to do when doing serious editing of source code simply do not respect the boundaries of syntactic constructs. -- Bill Findlay with blueyonder.co.uk; use surname & forename; ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-16 14:25 ` (see below) @ 2011-01-16 16:43 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov 2011-01-16 20:48 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 0 siblings, 1 reply; 69+ messages in thread From: Dmitry A. Kazakov @ 2011-01-16 16:43 UTC (permalink / raw) On Sun, 16 Jan 2011 14:25:53 +0000, (see below) wrote: > On 16/01/2011 12:57, in article olao885lpaij$.1273idj6ytssc$.dlg@40tude.net, > "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote: > >> On Sun, 16 Jan 2011 11:59:18 +0000, Simon Wright wrote: >> >>> Suppose we decide to have books with chapters with paragraphs. Are we >>> going to say >>> >>> <book> >>> <chapter> >>> <paragraph> >> >> Let's not. Documents have no such structure. When imposed on, this >> structure makes usage of the documents very difficult. ... > > There was a fad in the '70s for program editors that worked on the basis of > a similar structure, but derived from the syntax of the programming > language. I don't care much about the internal representation of the documents. In particular because I don't think that document should be programmed (TeX was all wrong idea). > I never used any of them for more than half an hour because the > kinds of things one wants to do when doing serious editing of source code > simply do not respect the boundaries of syntactic constructs. Yes, I think the point is important. There is another example of this. Visual X-Tools is the worst ever IDE made, for this reason. (For those lucky, who never heard about it, X-tools render the source code in a way that visualize the program control structure. E.g. then-part of an if-statement on the left and the else-part of the right, a sort of textual block-diagrams.) -- Regards, Dmitry A. Kazakov http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-16 16:43 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov @ 2011-01-16 20:48 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 0 siblings, 0 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) @ 2011-01-16 20:48 UTC (permalink / raw) Le Sun, 16 Jan 2011 17:43:22 +0100, Dmitry A. Kazakov <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> a écrit: > Yes, I think the point is important. There is another example of this. > Visual X-Tools is the worst ever IDE made, for this reason. > > (For those lucky, who never heard about it, X-tools render the source > code > in a way that visualize the program control structure. E.g. then-part of > an > if-statement on the left and the else-part of the right, a sort of > textual > block-diagrams.) This sort of representation could be relevant (think about UML diagrams) for some usages. The error is to display the real source in such a way. This graphical representation is good for outlines, and to be useful, should be able to make a kind of excerpts of the source. There are also the visual paradigms used for beginners. This work nice, that is not so bad, just that only works fine on small things. Otherwise, the amount of area required to represent a part of a source being far above what is required to represent the same with text, this does not help readability (required when things become larger). May be the kind of product you mentioned targets bad decisioners ? (at least people with a bad representation of what the real things are). -- Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour les chiens. “I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-16 12:57 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov 2011-01-16 14:25 ` (see below) @ 2011-01-16 15:33 ` Simon Wright 2011-01-16 16:44 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov 2011-01-16 21:05 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 1 sibling, 2 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Simon Wright @ 2011-01-16 15:33 UTC (permalink / raw) "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> writes: > On Sun, 16 Jan 2011 11:59:18 +0000, Simon Wright wrote: > >> Suppose we decide to have books with chapters with paragraphs. Are we >> going to say >> >> <book> >> <chapter> >> <paragraph> > > Let's not. Documents have no such structure. When imposed on, this > structure makes usage of the documents very difficult. I have to work with > many documents on networking issues, they are mostly in PDF. These are > almost unusable *because* they are 1) in PDF, 2) structured as "books," > which they are not, and never should have been. > > A hierarchy of text segments (chapter, paragraph etc) is a possible view of > the document, of which importance is quite minor and becoming more and more > negligible, because documents are never read sequentially. Document is not > a fiction novel. The structure of pages is also a view, a harmful view, > because pages have nothing to do either with the content or with the > rendering on the display. Well, you've lost me there. If you had to write something on networking issues (I say 'something' because if you're going to chuck out book, chapter, paragraph etc you might as well go the whole hog and chuck out document too :) how would you structure it? ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-16 15:33 ` Simon Wright @ 2011-01-16 16:44 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov 2011-01-16 21:05 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 1 sibling, 0 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Dmitry A. Kazakov @ 2011-01-16 16:44 UTC (permalink / raw) On Sun, 16 Jan 2011 15:33:25 +0000, Simon Wright wrote: > "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> writes: > >> On Sun, 16 Jan 2011 11:59:18 +0000, Simon Wright wrote: >> >>> Suppose we decide to have books with chapters with paragraphs. Are we >>> going to say >>> >>> <book> >>> <chapter> >>> <paragraph> >> >> Let's not. Documents have no such structure. When imposed on, this >> structure makes usage of the documents very difficult. I have to work with >> many documents on networking issues, they are mostly in PDF. These are >> almost unusable *because* they are 1) in PDF, 2) structured as "books," >> which they are not, and never should have been. >> >> A hierarchy of text segments (chapter, paragraph etc) is a possible view of >> the document, of which importance is quite minor and becoming more and more >> negligible, because documents are never read sequentially. Document is not >> a fiction novel. The structure of pages is also a view, a harmful view, >> because pages have nothing to do either with the content or with the >> rendering on the display. > > Well, you've lost me there. If you had to write something on networking > issues (I say 'something' because if you're going to chuck out book, > chapter, paragraph etc you might as well go the whole hog and chuck out > document too :) how would you structure it? It should be an interlinked network of text pieces. Its representation should depend on the current view, especially the order and the visibility of its parts. Consider Ada's RM, ARM and the Rationale as one document. It is impossible to have as a structure of chapters, it just does not work. Further, text is not the only part of the document. There are links which should be rendered in the text. They should also be rendered outside the text as a graph, a cloud diagram, etc. There are bookmarks, history of text navigation, history of document changes, readers comments etc. You mentioned Wiki, which obviously is a far better presentation model or electronic documentation than PDF. So far I saw no satisfactory ideas of how computer-era documentation should be made. -- Regards, Dmitry A. Kazakov http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-16 15:33 ` Simon Wright 2011-01-16 16:44 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov @ 2011-01-16 21:05 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 1 sibling, 0 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) @ 2011-01-16 21:05 UTC (permalink / raw) Le Sun, 16 Jan 2011 16:33:25 +0100, Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org> a écrit: >> A hierarchy of text segments (chapter, paragraph etc) is a possible >> view of >> the document, of which importance is quite minor and becoming more and >> more >> negligible, because documents are never read sequentially. Document is >> not >> a fiction novel. The structure of pages is also a view, a harmful view, >> because pages have nothing to do either with the content or with the >> rendering on the display. > > Well, you've lost me there. If you had to write something on networking > issues (I say 'something' because if you're going to chuck out book, > chapter, paragraph etc you might as well go the whole hog and chuck out > document too :) how would you structure it? Pascal or Ludovic introduced DITA in this topic. May be he would like this one ;) This one use multiple part to be later merged together (the merge may be done in multiple way, simultaneously), while DocBook create a monolithic document the first time. I suppose what Dmitry was to notice, has more to deal with *premature formating*, just like there is premature optmization, than with Book and Page used as paradigm to talk about the structure of a document. What to use depends on the area. Think about a software design, you have comments in the source, some documentation fragment on the topic of the application and its area. How could you create a single document from this ? There is no way. You would better consider all of these to be standalone document fragments, then do an assemblage of these fragments targeting users, another targeting the maintainers, another targeting document used to promote the application, and so on. Obviously, you need something common to these fragment, something which make these to know about each other when required and be able to merged these together, to know what kind of fragment is this, how it relate to other. That is what DITA is for (and RDF may be useful too here). Now think about some movie review, there is less something like independent fragments here, and you may prefer DocBook instead (DITA is likely to be useless at all here). Note 1: DITA may produce DocBook, these are not opposite. Note 2: I said DITA and DocBook, while this may be any other systems of conventions with the same functionalities (as an example, DocBook is known to be too much for some applications, the same about DITA). -- Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour les chiens. “I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-16 11:59 ` Simon Wright 2011-01-16 12:57 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov @ 2011-01-16 20:34 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 1 sibling, 0 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) @ 2011-01-16 20:34 UTC (permalink / raw) Le Sun, 16 Jan 2011 12:59:18 +0100, Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org> a écrit: > "Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr> writes: > >> Better XML as source than TeX/LaTex there. Some document model exist >> for math notations, and anyway, the nature of XML allow you to write a >> document without even the need for a document model reference (you may >> rely on good tag name and not too much obfuscating attributes). > > I don't see how you can recommend free-structured XML. > Please, forget about this particular one sentence. I feel I was wrong to introduce this one. Using a model is obviously recommended. I just wanted to underline the transparency of this kind of source. Further more, I did not had large systems in mid when I wrote this (my own fault to not have been more precise about it). Apologize. -- Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour les chiens. “I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-15 15:04 ` Elias Salomão Helou Neto 2011-01-15 17:45 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) @ 2011-01-16 1:27 ` Georg Bauhaus 2011-01-16 2:49 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-16 12:27 ` Elias Salomão Helou Neto 1 sibling, 2 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Georg Bauhaus @ 2011-01-16 1:27 UTC (permalink / raw) On 1/15/11 4:04 PM, Elias Salom�o Helou Neto wrote: > Now, for automatic document generation, both from practical and > technical viewpoints, there is no chance for .rtf/.doc/.odt > against .tex as an intermediate format for generating .pdf. Sorry if > this will sound a little bit harsh, but anyone who would choose one of > the three former against the latter, simply doesn't know what is > doing. Anything that can be done by .rtf/.doc/.odt can be done with > LaTeX, but the opposite is just not true. From the *practical* point of view, I can think of many features available in Microsoft Word or OpenOffice Writer (or FrameMaker or Ventura Publisher, or Adobe Something) not available in TeX. That's by design. Nevertheless, The ISO Fortran 2003 draft document is proof that LaTeX is a possibility for this kind of document. Some documents accompanying a SofCheck compiler are produced from Lout input. So that works, too. (TeXmacs is a formidable editor for technical stuff. Interestingly, it doesn't use TeX files for storage.) > If you intend to get to pdf through an intermediate format, tex is > just the way to go. > >> "The point of the XML-based Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) >> is to create modular technical documents that are easy to reuse with >> varied display and delivery mechanisms, such as helpsets, manuals, >> hierarchical summaries for small-screen devices, and so on." > > I have never heard about DITA before, but I must mention that there is > nothing book-centric about TeX itself, TeX's primary *objective* was/is to provide everything for math books, including TAOCP, WEB, or math papers, don't you think? Its prominent features: paragraph breaking, page breaking, insertions, and math mode, should be telling. Anything a little more fancy is brittle and takes huge efforts to get going smoothly (again, from a practical point of view). DITA OTOH is not at all about formatting, or paragraphs, or pages. It is about topics, and structuring. About just the content. It is nowhere like TeX. Around 2000, a paperback of publications of Knuth's appeared. In one of the entries about the history of TeX he explains how Guy Steele(?) prodded him to add \if. Had Knuth objected, then his original plan to make TeX unconditionally a format for only describing text on pages could have succeeded. The plan was, IIRC, to support user friendly computer programs that would produce TeX files. (And not have ambitious programmers try to be typographers and to be text processor designers using a minimal macro system only, and literally.) > therefore your objection > clearly does not apply here. The conclusion that TeX is easily used for all kinds of layout sounds a bit optimistic. Also, programmatic text processing feels anything like simple redefining or \newcommanding macros. Or satisfyingly interactive, if you aren't a programmer editing "source text". BTDT. Flexibility comes with additions like PSTricks. Nice, but no longer just TeX, and certainly, well, full of tricks. The Fortran 2003 ISO draft standard is using TeX at some point, though. Don't know if ISO Fortran 2003 has been submitted as PDF, but the draft document sure shows all signs of having been produced from TeX input. (pdfTeX-1.40.9, LaTeX with hyperref package.) But that's a book... hyperref won't give you Eclipse help views easily, or will it? Or .info files. > TeX is about beautiful typesetting and it > is a fully fledged macro language, so you can get about anything you > want from it. Assembly language has its beauty and you can get anything you want from it. True, but assembly language is not thefirst choice for all programmers, whatever the powers are that directly assembling program give us. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-16 1:27 ` Georg Bauhaus @ 2011-01-16 2:49 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-16 12:27 ` Elias Salomão Helou Neto 1 sibling, 0 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) @ 2011-01-16 2:49 UTC (permalink / raw) Le Sun, 16 Jan 2011 02:27:07 +0100, Georg Bauhaus <rm-host.bauhaus@maps.futureapps.de> a écrit: > […] Interesting to see how document authoring and publishing is a so hot topic for Ada novelists. For any people interested in some specific points of the topic; about DITA, DocBook and XML and narrative documents (XML focused for narrative representation rather than data) : http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2008/05/dita_docbook_and_the_art_of_th.html That said, about documenting and to come back a bit to an old topic opened in this usenet (2009, I believe), I wonder if someone know some standards for token based folding (not syntax based) in program source as well as standards for linking to external entities, like another part of the source providing file name and line number or to any other document; all of that embedded in comments (obviously). We already talked here in this usenet, about some Java world annotation conventions in comments which could be worth applied as a standard convention in many other places, like Ada source (these conventions are already become famous in C, Python, JavaScript and others worlds). But I don't believe this could be enough, as this provide nothing dedicated to token based folding or links to external entities (the question is in some way related to a kind of derivative interpretation of literate programming). If any one know any track, … welcome -- Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour les chiens. “I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-16 1:27 ` Georg Bauhaus 2011-01-16 2:49 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) @ 2011-01-16 12:27 ` Elias Salomão Helou Neto 2011-01-16 19:22 ` Georg Bauhaus 1 sibling, 1 reply; 69+ messages in thread From: Elias Salomão Helou Neto @ 2011-01-16 12:27 UTC (permalink / raw) On 15 jan, 23:27, Georg Bauhaus <rm-host.bauh...@maps.futureapps.de> wrote: > From the *practical* point of view, I can think of many features > available in Microsoft Word or OpenOffice Writer (or FrameMaker > or Ventura Publisher, or Adobe Something) not available in TeX. How to generate the file formats required by these softs from Ada? > That's by design. Yep. They're not designed as intermediate formats to be generated programatically. > Nevertheless, The ISO Fortran 2003 draft document is > proof that LaTeX is a possibility for this kind of document. Thank you for pointing out the example, but not automatically generated. > Some > documents accompanying a SofCheck compiler are produced from Lout input. The same than TeX, but different language paradigm. Furthermore, Lout is not fully capable to generate PDFs. > So that works, too. (TeXmacs is a formidable editor for technical > stuff. Interestingly, it doesn't use TeX files for storage.) Probably because of its nearly WYSIWYG nature. It is not suitable for automatically generating PDFs. You will have to edit the stuff manually. Should we consider using TeXmacs' own format as intermediate? > TeX's primary *objective* was/is to provide everything for math books, Primary. But it does hit farther targets. > Anything a little more fancy is brittle and > takes huge efforts to get going smoothly (again, from a practical > point of view). Most things are done already and there are packages for about anything one needs. > Flexibility comes with additions like PSTricks. > Nice, but no longer just TeX, and certainly, well, full of tricks. It is TeX. There is no need to modify the typesetting software because of the \special macro. > But that's a book... hyperref won't give you Eclipse help views > easily, or will it? Or .info files. Why do you mention it? The OP wanted PDFs! When did .info files or Eclipse help views come into play? Let us get things straight here. The OP wanted PDFs, if you're using PDF, you surely want excellent typesetting. As I see TeX is a great tool for this job. Elias ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-16 12:27 ` Elias Salomão Helou Neto @ 2011-01-16 19:22 ` Georg Bauhaus 0 siblings, 0 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Georg Bauhaus @ 2011-01-16 19:22 UTC (permalink / raw) On 1/16/11 1:27 PM, Elias Salom�o Helou Neto wrote: > On 15 jan, 23:27, Georg Bauhaus<rm-host.bauh...@maps.futureapps.de> > wrote: >> From the *practical* point of view, I can think of many features >> available in Microsoft Word or OpenOffice Writer (or FrameMaker >> or Ventura Publisher, or Adobe Something) not available in TeX. > > How to generate the file formats required by these softs from Ada? (1) Write a program controlling any capable text processing software's programming interface, as was suggested. This method will be forgetful of internal data formats of these programs. The method is unavailable if you don't have the programs. A third party could be offering a ready made class library for generating the files, though. (2) Depending on the level of abstraction, one may generate .gen files or maker files just like LaTeX files. I find targeting anything at a level lower than that to be an attempt at reinventing big wheels. >> Nevertheless, The ISO Fortran 2003 draft document is >> proof that LaTeX is a possibility for this kind of document. > > Thank you for pointing out the example, but not automatically > generated. Really? I don't know how the Fortran people had generated input for TeX. >> So that works, too. (TeXmacs is a formidable editor for technical >> stuff. Interestingly, it doesn't use TeX files for storage.) > > Probably because of its nearly WYSIWYG nature. Nearly? > It is not suitable for > automatically generating PDFs. Have your Ada program generate a TeXmacs files, in Scheme format. Then, $ texmacs --convert test.scm test.pdf --quit Similar to how one uses LaTeX or Lout. Is it possible to run Word simply like C:\MyFiles> word /convert /in:test.docx /out:test.pdf /quit > There is no need to modify the typesetting software because > of the \special macro. \special is indicating a need for output that TeX alone cannot produce. Is this standard enough? >> But that's a book... hyperref won't give you Eclipse help views >> easily, or will it? Or .info files. > > Why do you mention it? The OP wanted PDFs! When did .info files or > Eclipse help views come into play? I got carried away, thinking about the document generating processes, and in particular, about how a document will be used. (By clients, programmers, ISO, ...) If you want typographically flexible typesetting (really, layout), TeX is out of the question (for example, frames that span a page break?). If you wanted to write an Ada program that generates this in PDF directly, wouldn't you be trying hard to reinvent text formatting? ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-10 18:54 ` Adam Beneschan 2011-01-11 1:50 ` Randy Brukardt 2011-01-11 8:51 ` Stephen Leake @ 2011-01-12 21:06 ` Florian Weimer 2 siblings, 0 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: Florian Weimer @ 2011-01-12 21:06 UTC (permalink / raw) * Adam Beneschan: > As long as we're on sort of a similar subject, I've wondered several > times if there are Ada libraries for creating Microsoft Word > documents. Aren't you supposed to use Microsoft Office and COM for this task? Wouldn't GNATCOM do the job (if it still exist)? ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
* Re: Generating PDFs with Ada 2011-01-09 1:00 Generating PDFs with Ada R. Tyler Croy ` (3 preceding siblings ...) 2011-01-10 18:54 ` Adam Beneschan @ 2011-01-12 14:14 ` RasikaSrinivasan@gmail.com 4 siblings, 0 replies; 69+ messages in thread From: RasikaSrinivasan@gmail.com @ 2011-01-12 14:14 UTC (permalink / raw) On Jan 8, 8:00 pm, "R. Tyler Croy" <ty...@linux.com> wrote: > I have a project idea in my head that I'd /like/ to build with Ada rather than > Python but I can't seem to find a library for generating PDF files with Ada. > > Does such a beast exist? > > -- > - R. Tyler Croy > -------------------------------------- > Code:http://github.com/rtyler i see that this thread is a couple of days old - still. i built a binding to libharu - which is pretty comprehensive but not the latest. if you like you could go to: projectlets.sourceforge.net let me know if it helps. thanks, srini ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 69+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2011-01-16 21:05 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 69+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2011-01-09 1:00 Generating PDFs with Ada R. Tyler Croy 2011-01-09 9:29 ` Pascal Obry 2011-01-10 2:29 ` Stephen Leake 2011-01-10 3:48 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-10 10:19 ` Georg Bauhaus 2011-01-10 17:02 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-15 13:55 ` Elias Salomão Helou Neto 2011-01-15 14:51 ` Pascal Obry 2011-01-15 15:20 ` Elias Salomão Helou Neto 2011-01-15 17:55 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-16 3:13 ` Elias Salomão Helou Neto 2011-01-16 3:42 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-09 9:43 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov 2011-01-09 11:28 ` leonid 2011-01-09 15:36 ` Gautier write-only 2011-01-10 18:54 ` Adam Beneschan 2011-01-11 1:50 ` Randy Brukardt 2011-01-11 8:51 ` Stephen Leake 2011-01-11 15:37 ` Adam Beneschan 2011-01-11 18:41 ` Ludovic Brenta 2011-01-11 20:09 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-11 20:47 ` Adam Beneschan 2011-01-11 22:05 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-11 22:14 ` Ludovic Brenta 2011-01-11 22:22 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-11 22:32 ` Ludovic Brenta 2011-01-11 22:38 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-12 1:37 ` Shark8 2011-01-12 9:42 ` Stephen Leake 2011-01-12 22:53 ` Randy Brukardt 2011-01-13 8:29 ` Ludovic Brenta 2011-01-11 22:14 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-12 9:36 ` Pascal Obry 2011-01-12 13:02 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-12 14:16 ` Pascal Obry 2011-01-12 9:00 ` Maciej Sobczak 2011-01-12 9:44 ` sjw 2011-01-12 10:44 ` Manuel Collado 2011-01-12 13:12 ` Georg Bauhaus 2011-01-12 10:04 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov 2011-01-12 21:25 ` Maciej Sobczak 2011-01-12 21:57 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov 2011-01-12 23:14 ` Randy Brukardt 2011-01-13 8:33 ` Ludovic Brenta 2011-01-13 9:11 ` Georg Bauhaus 2011-01-13 20:40 ` Randy Brukardt 2011-01-13 22:34 ` Georg Bauhaus 2011-01-14 6:26 ` Thomas Løcke 2011-01-13 23:59 ` Edward Fish 2011-01-15 15:04 ` Elias Salomão Helou Neto 2011-01-15 17:45 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-15 23:58 ` Georg Bauhaus 2011-01-16 2:49 ` Elias Salomão Helou Neto 2011-01-16 3:21 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-16 11:59 ` Simon Wright 2011-01-16 12:57 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov 2011-01-16 14:25 ` (see below) 2011-01-16 16:43 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov 2011-01-16 20:48 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-16 15:33 ` Simon Wright 2011-01-16 16:44 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov 2011-01-16 21:05 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-16 20:34 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-16 1:27 ` Georg Bauhaus 2011-01-16 2:49 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) 2011-01-16 12:27 ` Elias Salomão Helou Neto 2011-01-16 19:22 ` Georg Bauhaus 2011-01-12 21:06 ` Florian Weimer 2011-01-12 14:14 ` RasikaSrinivasan@gmail.com
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