[scribus-dev] backends rewrite

[Craig Ringer]

On 01/16/2011 09:02 AM, Andreas Vox wrote:

> The question if the ScPainter implementations for PDF, PS and SVG use the
> corresponding cairo backend is independent of that. Currently we do a lot of
> things in PDF output that's just not possible with cairo (shared objects, Javascript,
> forms, annotations, CMYK, ...). It's much easier for us to reconcile this stuff with
> an ScPainter implementation than rewriting the cairo PDF surface to become a
> full fledged PDF output library.

This might be another good time to look at a C or C++ based PDF output 
library that does all the low level PDF syntax and 
XObject/xref/header/footer stuff for you, ensuring valid PDF syntax and 
structure. Scribus's string-based PDF output isn't going to be 
maintainable long-term, and makes it REALLY hard to track down errors. 
If it's going to be converted to use ScPainter, maybe that's a good time 
to move it over to a PDF library, too?

If using a lower-level PDF library, you can still do all the trickier 
bits that Cairo etc don't understand yourself, but at least you get a 
nice programmatic output interface that'll do the juggling for you.

--
Craig Ringer