Since I've never written any application in PS only PDF, I can't give you
any answer to their differences.
On the other hand I agree with Mark about the Interviewer being bigot or
"glued", as we would say here in Greece, onto one technology, that he
refuses to expand his horizons. There is also the denial (probably due to
ignorance) of Open Source software, which is not that uncommon out there in
the Industry.
I hope that your next Interview will have positive results for you.
Best Regard.
Yannis Iliadis
2007/4/27, Mark Storer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
It sounds to me (based solely on your comments for obvious reasons) that
the interviewer is a PS bigot, doesn't care of open source, and isn't
interested in investing time to learn all this New Fangled Technology (PDF
in this case).
As such, he may well have felt threatened by you (someone up on current
technology, such as PDF, iText, and that new-fangled Alternating Current),
so had ulterior motives for torpedoing your application.
That's a bit of a leap, and none too flattering to a person I've never
actually met, but fits the facts as you presented them.
PostScript IS a programming language... that's one of the appealing
factors of PDF. A variable in the description of page 1 may affect the
appearance of page 412 in a PS file. To draw any given page, you need to
process every instruction up to that point in the PS file. PDF pages are
self contained. PDF files can be encrypted, compressed, and have
links/audio/video/form fields/bookmarks/reading order/etc/etc/etc.
A PDF viewer (Reader by a landslide) is all but guaranteed on a modern
desktop/laptop of whatever OS. The most common PS viewer I'm aware of (and
no, that's not my department) is Distiller + Reader. Ghostview and its ilk
have far less 'market penetration'.
It sucks that you almost certainly won't get the job... but I wouldn't be
mad at your interviewer. I'd pitty him, and learn from him: Technology
marches on. If you let it leave you behind you should seriously consider a
new career. OTOH there's always some legacy system to maintain. Meh.
--Mark Storer
Senior Software Engineer
Cardiff.com
#include <disclaimer>
typedef std::Disclaimer<Cardiff> DisCard;
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Udo
> Rader
> Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2007 6:01 AM
> To: Post all your questions about iText here
> Subject: Re: [iText-questions] PostScript better than iText PDF?iText
> breaks versioned software?
>
>
> On Thu, 2007-04-26 at 07:11 -0500, david wrote:
> > Hello Bruno, Paulo and all of the iText dev, gurus, users,
> ranters and ravers. I am a Java programmer and a long time
> user of iText (since 2001). I recently had a job interview.
> The interview went south right away with the inteviewer
> attacking my choice and use of the iText Java package to
> produce SQL generated reports for a Java project described in
> my resume. I explained to the interviewer that PDF is just
> re-defined PostScript which make working with PostScript
> printers a lot easier. And, iText makes the entire problem of
> producing programmatic printable reports a breeze. Using my
> own statements against me the interviewer claims he can
> program in PostScript dismissing the need for the iText
> package. The interviewer went on to say hypothetically that
> the iText package is probably wrought with bugs and everytime
> the interviewer's versioned software is incremented to the
> next version the iText package would break the versioned
> software and have to be fixed everytime it is us
> > ed. The interviewers statements were made using the view
> of what would happen if his companies software was to use the
> iText package. So my questions are:
> >
> > 1. Is programming directly in PostScript better than using iText?
>
> I am neither a PS nor a PDF guru, but PDF as a format offers
> a lot more
> compared to postscript (eg. input fields etc.).
>
> And PS as a format is not free, it needs to be licensed (not sure if
> that still applies).
>
> > 2. would iText break versioned software everytime the
> target software is versioned?
>
> Hmm, I have _never_ had a single issue that could confirm this claim.
> What I know however is quite a prominent library that uses itext as a
> PDF generator: jasper http://www.jasperforge.com/.
>
> In the past updates to the jasper library always required you to
> recompile the reports created with previous versions (jasper
> serializes
> the reports).
>
> This was indeed very annoying, but absolutely not itext related and
> recent versions of jasper don't have this issue any more.
>
> I have the suspicion that your interviewer is mixing things up ...
>
> --
> Udo Rader
>
> bestsolution.at EDV Systemhaus GmbH
> http://www.bestsolution.at
>
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