Hi Tharaka, Object Inspector: I'm not sure you need a tree for inspecting a single object. The tree is useful when the PDF debugger is integrated as an alternative view of a PDF. I'd expect to have a customized window (a plug-in ;-) ) for each kind of object when inspecting it. A bitmap image would display information about the size, the color space and profile, effective resolution. Clicking on a word would display its font and color. I guess it would be quite cool to have a button that says "jump to object tree" so it would switch to the debugger view and focus on the selected object. Imagine having viewer and debugger side-by-side in separate views and the object that you click on in the debugger is highlighted in the viewer. Wow. But I'm dreaming. ;-)
Unfortunately, JPF is off-limits for PDFBox if it is used for core functionality because it's under the LGPL license. Only optional components/plug-ins may depend on LGPL libraries. But I think the normal JAR Service Provider mechanism would already be good enough as a plug-in framework: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/guides/jar/jar.html#Service%20Provider We use that extensively over in Apache XML Graphics land. I would suggest to base the GUI on Java 6 where you have the service lookup built in: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/ServiceLoader.html Swing with Nimbus generally sounds good to me. OTOH, an RCP application would actually offer the whole pluggability (even at runtime) and an Eclipse-like workbench which would be great for such an application. But it would also mean practically re-writing both the PDF viewer (although the PDF painting via Java2D should still be usable) and debugger functionality. Both Swing and RCP are non-trivial to learn. On the technical side I'd probably favor RCP just a little bit, mostly because it's OSGi-based (I'm biased there) even if the Eclipse world does ugly things to OSGi. Furthermore, I know few good Swing applications but many good RCP applications. Maybe that's an indicator. But I'd have to learn RCP myself if I was to help out with this. Optional Content Groups (since PDF 1.5) are groups of objects (think "layer") that can be enabled and disabled. I think that's advanced functionality that the mainstream doesn't really need. But I'm also not sure what Medhi means with transparency layers. On 29.03.2012 03:55:28 Tharaka Nayanajith Wijebandara wrote: > Hi, > > > Thanx mehdi, you have summarized all primary objective and we can continue > discussion based on it. > > For the GUI, I'm going to use Swing Framework and to modernize we can go > for some available look and Feel such as nimbus. Is there any suggestion? > > > I need some ideas about PDF object inspector and since it tool for > developer all you can give some suggestions. In my opinion we can use swing > tree for this. User can right click on object and click ‘inspect’ command > in the menu, then it will show the object and it properties in the tree and > highlight object margin in the PDF view. > > > Plugin frame is another feature to consider. We can use and adapt some > available plugin frame for PDFReader rather than going for new our own one. > As per my understand Java Plug-in Framework (http://jpf.sourceforge.net/) > is good one we can use and it is XML based. Is there any apache framework > for this? If I'm correct, maven project is based on plugin framework. > > > Mehdi, I would like to add bookmark feature also in to primary objective > list. It will allow user to view, add, edit and delete book marks. And also > I'm confused about what you mean by supporting optional content and > transparency layers. > > On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 1:49 PM, mehdi houshmand <med1...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > Hi Tharaka, > > > > Ok, well let's start with thinking about how this GUI is going to look. In > > its current form, it's looking a little dated, it might be worth using some > > of the GUI frameworks out there to spruce it up a little and making it a > > bit more modern. So if we get a list of TODOs (starting with Jeremias' > > suggestions): > > > > - Investigate and design a proposal for upgrading the PDFReader GUI (i.e. > > modernizing it) > > - Implement a PDF object inspector to display PDF object properties when > > objects are "clicked-on" in the viewer > > - Implement a type-writer feature to add/remove text from a content stream > > from within the PDFViewer > > - Design a plugin framework for the viewer > > > > Maybe those are a good list of primary objectives? We should think about > > some secondary objectives, like possibly supporting Optional Content in the > > view (not sure if it already is) and better handling of transparency > > layers? > > > > Just some thoughts, let's keep this discussions fluid for now, we haven't > > actually got that long before we have to submit a proposal though. > > > > Mehdi > > > > On 22 March 2012 03:04, Tharaka Nayanajith Wijebandara < > > tharaka...@gmail.com > > > wrote: > > > > > Hi, > > > > > > > > > Thanks everyone for your valuable ideas and comments. > > > > > > > > > It seems most of you like to enhancing PDFReader project. Specially I > > > prefer Jeremias' idea, develop application which allow user to access > > > PDFBox features through the GUI and PDF viewer with integrated PDF > > > Debugger. In my opinion it will be very much useful tool for users as > > well > > > as developers rather than just another PDF reader. So I would like to > > > continue with this project. However, since there are several ways to > > > enhance PDFReader, we have to define the scope of the project according > > to > > > priority in next few days. > > > > > > > > > Additionally I want to mention another thing here. As my experience > > current > > > PDFReader is also not very much reliable and not working smoothly. I > > still > > > can't understand that whether it is problem of code of PDFReader or > > PDFBox > > > core. Anyway I think that it's better if we can consider also this in the > > > project, if it's not some issue in PDFBox core. > > > > > > On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 10:26 PM, mehdi houshmand <med1...@gmail.com> > > > wrote: > > > > > > > Hi Tharaka, > > > > > > > > You have plenty of options here, the student application deadline is on > > > the > > > > 6th April (see the calendar > > > > http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/events/google/gsoc2012), so you've > > > got > > > > plenty of time. > > > > > > > > Let me and/or the community know if you have any questions about the > > > > projects. If you have an idea of which project you'd prefer, maybe we > > can > > > > start drawing up some goals and a schedule and discuss with the > > community > > > > to get some feedback on which facets are a) interesting b) useful or c) > > > > both! > > > > > > > > Mehdi > > > > > > > > On 20 March 2012 15:58, Jeremias Maerki <d...@jeremias-maerki.ch> > > wrote: > > > > > > > > > There are a number of HTML to XSL-FO converters. I've never checked > > how > > > > > good the results are but ultimately a native HTML engine is likely to > > > > > produce better results especially since HTML was not really designed > > > for > > > > > print and has to be retrofitted in CSS3. But again, this is a large > > > > > project and, IMO, out of scope for PDFBox. > > > > > > > > > > http://html2fo.sourceforge.net/ > > > > > http://denature.sourceforge.net/ > > > > > ...and probably others... > > > > > > > > > > On 20.03.2012 13:02:33 Dexter Mishra wrote: > > > > > > I vote for a PDS editor kind of stuff. > > > > > > Another thing regarding the HTML to PDS, cant it be done with > > XSL-FO > > > > > > feature? > > > > > > Thanks > > > > > > > > > > > > On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 3:03 PM, Maruan Sahyoun < > > > > sahy...@fileaffairs.de > > > > > >wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > <snip/> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >> > > > > > > > >> Although I think that the current PDF Reader can be enhanced > > in > > > > many > > > > > > > ways > > > > > > > >> there are already so many Readers out there as well as PDF > > > support > > > > > > > within > > > > > > > >> web browsers my personal opinion is that enhancing PDFBox core > > > > > > > capabilities > > > > > > > >> would be more beneficial. > > > > > > > >> > > > > > > > >> With kind regards > > > > > > > >> > > > > > > > >> Maruan Sahyoun > > > > > > > >> > > > > > > > >> > > > > > > > > Check out Jeremias' suggestions of the viewer, it's less of a > > > > viewer > > > > > and > > > > > > > > more of a front-end for a lot of the tools PDFBox has to > > offer, a > > > > > PDFBox > > > > > > > > GUI so to speak rather than a PDF viewer. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > I'd still look into enhancing PDFBox core as this will benefit > > most > > > > > users. > > > > > > > Looking at the bugs and issues most come from core capabilities. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Jeremias Maerki > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > > Thanks & Regards, > > > Tharaka Wijebandara, > > > Faculty of Information Technology, > > > University of Moratuwa. > > > > > > > > > -- > Thanks & Regards, > Tharaka Wijebandara, > Faculty of Information Technology, > University of Moratuwa. Jeremias Maerki
