(OT) Open source PCL to PDF converters?

[Bob Rasmussen]

(I've clipped a lot of things, obviously.)

Let me see if I can aid in this discussion without starting any arguments.

PDF is not strictly graphical. It can contain bitmap graphics (of all 
sorts), but it can also contain text. Text can use a) any of the 14 
standard fonts which are provided by Adobe in the reader; b) fonts 
embedded in the PDF file itself (bitmap or TrueType or Type 1); or c) 
bitmaps referenced but not embedded, with the obvious dangers of them not 
being available.

If a PDF contains text, it is usually searchable (such as on Google), 
because they've written simple "unpacking" programs to extract the text. 
Without these programs, the text is non-sequential and may be compressed. 
You couldn't simply grep a PDF for this reason, usually. A PDF can also 
contain meta data to assist in making it searchable. With a textual PDF 
you can also select text and copy to the clipboard.

If a PDF contains only bitmap page images, such as some scanners (and 
drivers) produce, it is typically not searchable, nor can it be copied to 
the clipboard as text.

It is true that there are now some printers that print PDFs directly, 
including some from HP. I haven't played with any. I would expect, though, 
that they would have trouble with any referenced (but not contained) 
object, such as a font.

The key asset to a PDF is the "P", for "portable". A PDF describes a 
document that can be viewed on and printed on virtually any device, and 
yet it is not printer specific. It can contain everything needed to print, 
in one file. It can be emailed as a single attachment. It can be 
searchable, meta-tagged, encrypted, bookmarked, indexed, hyperlinked into 
and out of, and it can contain attachments. It can contain text, bitmaps, 
line drawing, watermarks, and form overlays. 

Adobe recognized that PostScript was not portable enough to meet these 
purposes. So they made an evolutionary step. The PDF manual is full of 
back-references to PS, illustrating some of the problems that were 
addressed. Then they made the standard open, so everyone can write a PDF 
generator or viewer.

Now consider a simple G/L report, in 132 columns, that used to print on 
greenbar paper. You want to deliver it in printable format to your 
accountant. You don't know what kind of printer he has, or how big his 
paper is. What are you going to do? Email him groff output? Email him PCL? 
Email her plain text? How many lines will fit on the page? Who will set 
the character pitch and linespacing? How? Now you want some umlauts and 
Greek and Chinese...

Of course, if all this is too modern for you, you can always go back to 
the scroll - see this hilarious video (which won't play on a dumb 
terminal, by the way):
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX0-nqRmtos

Regards,
....Bob Rasmussen,   President,   Rasmussen Software, Inc.

personal e-mail: ras at anzio.com
 company e-mail: rsi at anzio.com
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