Re: Generating PDFs with Ada

["Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr>]

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).


-- 
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les chiens.

“I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010]