[OSM-talk] SVG to PDF

Andy Armstrong andy at hexten.net
Wed Dec 20 00:15:38 GMT 2006


On 19 Dec 2006, at 23:39, David Earl wrote:
>> Can that possibly be true? I've generated PDFs without ever having to
>> consider that the decoder might be reading from the end.
>
> Yes, it is true. How have you managed to write a PDF without  
> reading the
> spec :-).

Apparently with great ease - but I probably owe more to the tolerance  
of various rendering engines than I realised at the time :)

> Also from the spec, just to reiterate what I said in my own words:
> 'Note: If a PDF file contains binary data, as most do (see Section  
> 3.1,
> Lexical Conventions),
> it is recommended that the header line be immediately followed by a
> comment line containing at least four binary characters - that is,
> characters whose
> codes are 128 or greater. This will ensure proper behavior of file  
> transfer
> applications
> that inspect data near the beginning of a file to determine whether  
> to treat
> the file's
> contents as text or as binary.'

I stand corrected and informed thanks :)

So I wonder what to make of the fact that deleting the binary magic  
from the start of the Bath pdf made it work in Safari/Preview? I've  
certainly noticed Preview struggle on PDFs that Acrobat handles with  
ease but I've never seen it completely fail to render before.

-- 
Andy Armstrong, hexten.net





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