Re: 7.1 printed manuals

> Bruce Momjian writes:
>
> > Also, shouldn't we be distributing PDF files rather than PS files. I
> > always considered PS files to be unportable because they assume you have
> > the same fonts with identical font spacing installed on your machine.
> > PDF embeds the fonts inside the file.
>
> PS is more appropriate for printing, PDF is better for browsing. But yet
> better for browsing is HTML, so there isn't much of a niche for PDF.

Yes, I realize that ghostscript requires PS to print. I usually print
PDF's from inside PDF-viewer applications. However, I have never been
comfortable that users are going to have the identical fonts with the
same font metrics. If people stay with the standard Adobe 35 fonts, is
that safe?

My book had 52 fonts. Hard to imagine how anyone could use the PS file
for the book.

>
> > The other nifty feature of PDF files is bookmarks. They are pdfmarks
> > placed in the PS file which generates a bookmarks lists in Adobe
> > Acrobat. I find it allows people to jump around in the text much
> > quicker. I used it in the PDF version of my book. It is automatically
> > generated by LaTeX for every Chapter/Section in the book. Not sure if
> > you can do that with Applixware.
>
> If you use pdfjadetex then you'll get internal links. There's an example
> I just created at <http://www.postgresql.org/~petere/user.pdf>.
> (Coincidentally, I've just spent the afternoon upgrading jadetex and
> butchering my TeX installation to enlarge the internal tables.) The
> quality is okay, but it's not something I would sell. The line breaking
> has serious problems with long words (URLs, filenames), and some tables
> are way beyond good and evil.
>
> Of course you can just use ps2pdf and get no links. But then you don't
> really need the pdf.

Yes, LaTeX has a pdfmarks package that inserts the marks in the
postscript file.

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Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
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