--- "Peter B. West" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > SVG Generator can be added to an environment in > which Java 2D graphics > are already being produced, using the same > instructions which are used > on a Graphics2D object. The SVGGraphics2D object is > used instead, and > the same graphical operations are rendered in SVG. > Substitute PDF for SVG. >
I think I see what you're mentioning. One issue is that an "SVG Document" really just translates to a "PDF *Page*"--and we still have the issue of forward references and perhaps others that SVG doesn't have to be concerned with. [Speaking of which, for references such as "Page 1 OF X", which ordinarily require all X pages to be generated before the first page can be rendered--I'd like to think of a way in which placeholders can be placed in the output document, regardless whether PDF/PS, etc., for a final filling in of the last page number later. FOP does not do this currently in HEAD, and IIC in maintenance either. I think we need an ability to set and resolve placeholders (when the document is finished) within the Renderers--i.e., expand the Renderer interface to provide for this. Is this doable? Will it still be doable if we adopt your approach?] There may be an issue with efficiency here as well--I'm unsure if the graphical method is the most efficient way of writing out text data. (PDF is like RTF, internally human-readable text.) AWT and PDF can share the same rendering model--they do in 0.20.5--but there are also some differences. The AWT viewer is "re-entrant", i.e., the user can change the source in a text editor and press Refresh in the AWT viewer to see the changes. OTOH, the PDF and other renderers just finish when the document is done. Also, IIRC, AWT does a page-by-page rendering as the user changes the page on the screen. PDF doesn't--the whole document is returned at once. (The above may not have any relevance to what you're proposing, but I'm mentioning it just in case.) > It so happens that the availability of such a > substitution would be of > great use to me, because I am constructing the > layout in Java 2D terms, > so that I can get it working with minimum agony. Yes, but a PDFGraphics2D will take some time to develop. I'm still with FO objects and layout. We can keep this open as an idea, at least. Glen
