On Sun, May 18, 2008 at 9:51 PM, Christian Lohmaier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Sun, May 18, 2008 at 12:58:09AM +0100, Terry Burton wrote: >> I would like to recommend my open source PostScript barcoding library, > That is a big problem, as OOo doesn't support PostScript for > display/exporting to PDF, only when printing to postscript printers the > postscript code can be used effectively.
Hi Christian, Thank for your comments, very useful. Lacking support for EPS seems quite a surprising limitation - bother :-/ Do you know whether support for this on the horizon? >> The most straightforward approach would be the creation of a dialog >> (say Insert -> Object -> Barcode...) that accepts the parameters for >> the barcode, creates the correponding EPS code (this is what BWIPP >> makes completely trivial) > > OOo can only display (and export to PDF) the preview part of an EPS > (although it can use external programs to create a preview when the eps > doesn't provide one) - So a postscript/eps based solution doesn't > really fit. Clearly a native OOo barcode generator based on PostScript would have a dependency on a PS virtual machine of some kind, however it does not necessarily require a PS VM for the internal image generation and rendering. BWIPP is neatly split into a large set of encoder procedures (one for each barcode symbology) and a few renderer procedures. The corresponding encoders for each symbology accept the data to encode and any other parameters and then generate a data structure (a PS dictionary) that wholly and succinctly describes the barcode image. This can then be passed to the relevant render, "renlinear" in the case of one-dimensional barcodes, for image generation. Alternatively, the barcode structure can be dumped as plain text over some IPC channel to a non-PostScript frontend for parsing and internal rendering using whatever graphics system is available. It would be this latter approach that would make use of BWIPP possible providing that a PS VM is available. Does anybody have an opinion on the viability of this approach with OOo? The obvious downside would be that the feature would need to remain disabled without the presence of a PS VM, however I believe that this would be the fastest way to a comprehensive and proven barcode generation feature, especially if integrated PS support is forthcoming. Thanks again, Tez --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
