Re: My (ongoing) analysis of the proposed modules

[Martin Kretzschmar <m_kretzschmar gmx net>]

Am Mit, 2003-05-14 um 03.36 schrieb Malcolm Tredinnick:
> I use PDFs a lot, both creating them and reading a lot of
> specifications, so I made a serious attempt to solely use gpdf for a
> week at work.

Cool, thanks.

>  Have people really compared it to xpdf properly?

No, they have compared it only to ggv, it seems. So yeah, folks, go out
and compare to xpdf and tell me what you miss most (really).

> Currently, gpdf blends in better with GNOME, but it is significantly
> slower (startup time and per-page rendering time, so reading a document
> is slower) and is less functional than xpdf (in particular navigation
> via links is non-existent in gpdf -- which is the only effective way to
> navigate some documents).  The maintainer is aware of both of these and
> has some ideas about the speed thing, but they are both significant
> flaws.

Now the maintainer has some ideas about the links thing, too. I think
it's even easier to implement than the `embed fonts' feature.

>  I think it is a nice application, but it is not a replacement for
> xpdf yet. 

No, and it won't be in the 2.4 timeframe (I'm thinking of the fonts,
again, particularly those created by a badly-configured
TeX->dvips-Distiller pipeline or ancient GhostScripts).

> Doesn't that mean it is not yet desktop-worthy?

Dunno.

	Martin
-- 
The goal is clean code that works. (Ron Jeffries)