From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,6071f84396b8f5aa X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,domainid0,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Received: by 10.204.138.79 with SMTP id z15mr2447784bkt.8.1318888815578; Mon, 17 Oct 2011 15:00:15 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Path: l23ni11313bkv.0!nntp.google.com!news2.google.com!news.glorb.com!news.ecp.fr!news.jacob-sparre.dk!pnx.dk!jacob-sparre.dk!ada-dk.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Randy Brukardt" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Writing PDF files Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2011 17:00:12 -0500 Organization: Jacob Sparre Andersen Research & Innovation Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: static-69-95-181-76.mad.choiceone.net X-Trace: munin.nbi.dk 1318888814 32456 69.95.181.76 (17 Oct 2011 22:00:14 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@jacob-sparre.dk NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2011 22:00:14 +0000 (UTC) X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.5931 X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.6109 X-RFC2646: Format=Flowed; Original Xref: news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:14013 Date: 2011-10-17T17:00:12-05:00 List-Id: "Bill Findlay" wrote in message news:CAC12F97.FDDC%yaldnif.w@blueyonder.co.uk... >I am writing a KDF9 emulator in Ada 2005, and have reached the stage of > simulating a graph-plotter device. I'm hoping to do this by converting > KDF9 plot commands into a PDF file, but am having difficulty finding a > useful source of info on what a minimal PDF graphics file should contain. > > Is there a (preferably, simple) Ada library for this purpose, by any > chance? > > BTW I'm using MacOS X Lion. When we had this requirement for the Ada Standard, I ended up choosing to create an RTF file (rather than DOC or attempt to create PDFs directly). Part of the reason for that was the lack of documentation of exactly what is in a PDF file (I think that is more available nowdays, back then Adobe was charging $$$ for that information), and another part is the embedded fonts in the PDF (very hard to emulate). The RTFs our tool produces were designed for Microsoft Office 97 (and work reasonably well in Office 2003); they work in OpenOffice as well (but as might be expected, there are some formatting glitches -- and RM takes about an hour to open, compared to 30 seconds on Office). The RTFs then go through an old version of Acrobat. (If I could get OpenOffice formatting to work consistently, I'd use it's built-in converter for that job. RTF is relatively easy for a program to create (it is a plain text format), and Microsoft has extensive documentation on how it works. Or, you could just "borrow" part of the RM formatting tool (it will have a GPL license the next time it gets updated, which should be this week). Randy.