[OS X TeX] xpdf i-Package?

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 14.12.2005 um 12:57 schrieb Bruno Voisin:

> I was wondering whether it would make sense to provide an i-Package 
> for it.

Yes, it would be quite useful. And the README encourages:

	- I don't mind if you redistribute Xpdf in source and/or binary form,
	  as long as you include all of the documentation: README, man pages
	  (or help files), and COPYING.  (Note that the README file contains a
	  pointer to a web page with the source code.)
	
	- Selling a CD-ROM that contains Xpdf is fine with me, as long as it
	  includes the documentation.  I wouldn't mind receiving a sample
	  copy, but it's not necessary.


It too would need to supply a .xpdfrc file, and it would need some code 
to scan the disc for Unicode maps, i.e. mappings of characters in some 
'local' encoding (Greek, Cyrillic, Windows, ...) to their positions in 
Unicode (as Ross Moore did for XeTeX and (La)TeX codes). Adobe Reader 
has for this its Contents/MacOS/Resource/CMap and /Library/Application 
Support/Adobe/Fonts/Reqrd/CMaps directories, TeXniscope has some in 
/Applications/TeXniscope.app/Contents/Resources/CMap. Then it would 
need to enter all the fonts your printer or printer driver supports.

There is some work needed to make xpdf useful outside the small world 
of Latin scripts.


BTW, libXft, freetype and fontconfig are only needed when you want to 
give xpdf means to handle TrueType fonts. libiconv already exists in 
Mac OS X and is needed to convert between text encodings. libpng, 
jpegsrc, zlib are necessities of a modern operatings system, that Mac 
OS X already has. openmotif is a question of (bad) taste. If you had 
served your system better, it would have compiled faster without 
needing to fetch so much sources first. In Fink I can update from the 
command line: 'nice +11 fink update-all' and all Fink work runs at so 
low priority that my CPU stays constantly at its lower operating 
frequency and only produces a few Watts of thermal waste. No fans 
start. Only from time to time I have to keed my Mac on over night ... 
(when gtk++ or glib are updated a lot of applications get re-compiled 
and re-installed) And you want to delegate all this to Gerben?

--
Greetings

   Pete

"Let's face it; we don't want a free market economy either."
         James Farley, president, Coca-Cola Export Corp., 1959

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