PDF Library

Gerry Brush gerry.brush@bioanthropology.oxford.ac.uk
Thu, 19 Nov 98 18:56:07 GMT 

 [* The word xSUBSCRIBE so early in your posting made it bounce. MMae]
  v
I 0subscribe to R-help (not R-devel) but thought this was more relevant to  
R-devel, and the future of R's imaging model and cross-platform support.  If  
this has already been under discussion I apologize.  I've no connection with  
the product, business or its people.

Gerry



Begin forwarded message:

We, at FastIO Systems, are pleased to announce the availability of
ClibPDF: an ANSI C Source Library for Direct PDF Generation.

PDF (Portable Document Format) will be *THE* native graphics
interchange format of the upcoming MacOS X.  While we
anxiously wait for its arrival, you can start producing PDF files
programatically using ClibPDF now.

While MacOS X will no doubt allow PDF generation, ClibPDF
does not rely on any Apple-specific technology.  It's a plain
ANSI C library.  Therefore, it will work on just about any platform.

For details and downloading of ClibPDF, visit our web site,
<http://www.fastio.com/

## What is ClibPDF

ClibPDF is a library of ANSI C functions, distributed in source
form, for creating PDF (Acrobat) files directly via C language
programs without relying on any Adobe Acrobat tools and related
products. It is suitable for fast dynamic PDF Web page generation
in response to user input and real-time data, and also for implementing
publication-quality graph plotting for both on-screen viewing and
printing in any custom application. Since there is minimal
platform-specific code, it is ideal as cross-platform graphing
solutions with minimal developement efforts. Generated PDF files
are viewed and printed by auto-launching Adobe Acrobat Reader or
any other PDF viewer available free for many platforms. Note that
ClibPDF is for PDF file creation only. It has no support for reading
or editing existing PDF files.

## Notable Features of ClibPDF

- Most basic PDF drawing primitives are supported, plus arc and circle.
- Plot domains (linear, semi-log, log-log) with mesh to give graph
    paper appearance.
- Axes (linear, log, date) with flexible tick marks, numbering, and
    labelling.
- Markers, pointers, error bars for data points.
- Multi-page documents may be generated in any page order, and
    pages may be written in an interleaved manner.
- Support for Flate/Zlib compression for fast web download
    (No need for LZW license from Unisys.)
- In-memory PDF generation (no temp files).
- Transition, timed slide show support.

## Possible Applications

- Fast, light-weight CGI for dynamic PDF web pages generation.
- Report generation in medical, scientific, and industrial
    test equipment (and plots may be used directly in publications).
- Giving legacy console-type applications an attractive
    graphic output via auto-launched Arobat Reader (or any PDF viewer).
- Cross-platform graphing solutions.
- A unified imaging model for X-Window applications for beautiful
    screen AND printed output (no more ugly screen dumps). This
    eases the pain of the death of DPS (Display PostScript).

## License, Copying, and Distribution

ClibPDF is free OR commercial depending on how and by whom it is used.

ClibPDF is free for non-profit personal use, and use by educational,
non-profit, and government organizations.

Commercial license is required for use by for-profit entities (also
refered to as commercial users), including commercial web-site
deployment (including intranet), inclusion in in-house business,
production, manufacturing and research applications, for-profit use
by individuals, inclusion in commercial applications, libraries,
and tools that are sold or bundled with other commercial products.
There is a special deferment provision for shareware developers.
An automatic free 30-day examination period is granted for commercial
users for the purpose of evaluating ClibPDF.

The summary of license terms described above is an overview and is
not legally binding. Exact and legally accurate details of licensing
terms are described in the file LICENSE.txt or LICENSE.pdf included in
the distribution or at <http://www.fastio.com/LICENSE.pdf.

We welcome feedback regarding the feature list, licensing, bugs, and
improvements and any other suggestions. Please send comments to
clibpdf@fastio.com.

## Platforms tested so far

-- Unix variants --
BSDI BSD/OS 3.1 (gcc 2.7.2.1)
FreeBSD 2.2.7-STABLE (gcc 2.7.2.1)
Linux 2.0.34 (Red Hat 5.1) (gcc 2.7.2.3)
MacOS X Server (Rhapsody DR2)
NEXTSTEP 3.2, 3.3, OPENSTEP 4.2
SunOS 5.4 / (SUNWspro/SC4.0)

-- PCs --
MacOS 8.1 (Metrowerks IDE 1.7.4) -- See also: README.MacOS8
Windows NT 4.0 (VC++ 5.0) -- See also: README.win32

## Relationships to other software

Conceptually, ClibPDF has been inspired by Cgraph for PostScript
(<http://totoro.berkeley.edu/software/A_Cgraph.html), but it is
much more powerful and no code from Cgraph (PS) has been used.


Here are some comparisons with similar libraries. I don't claim
completeness or impartiality obviously, but I try to be fair.

PDFlib: There are acutally two PDFlib's, one from Thomas Merz,
and the other from Adobe.

NO part of ClibPDF is derived from or related to either of the
two PDF libraries. ClibPDF has been written completely independently.
I have seen some documentation for each, but no source code.

[1] Thomas Merz
<http://www.muc.de/~tm/pdflib/
Thomas Merz's PDFlib is also a source C language library for
dynamic PDF generation. There is some overlap in functionalities
between PDFlib and ClibPDF. PDFlib covers PDF generation at a basic
operator level. It has no compression yet, though the documentation
notes that it is planned.

ClibPDF is designed to do much more than PDFlib, and it is primarily
targeted for graph plotting applications with high-level APIs for
plot domains, data markers, and log and linear axes, although it
can be used for any purpose. ClibPDF can generate multi-page
documents in an arbitrary page order. Flate/Zlib compression is
supported.

[2] Adobe
<http://beta1.adobe.com/ada/acrosdk/libraries.html
Adobe PDF Library, I believe, is distributed in binary form only
with no sources (other than header and examples), thus supported
platforms are limited (in particular, there is no support for Linux
or FreeBSD). It may be used to write applications that will
create/read/edit PDF files. I have no idea how easy it is to use.

[3] PDFPerl
<http://www.ep.cs.nott.ac.uk/pdf-pl/
If you would rather use PERL scripts, this is for you.
Due to the interpreted nature of PERL, I think this is not going
to be fast (I am curious to see any comparisons).

ClibPDF and FastIO are trademarks of FastIO Systems.
Adobe, Acrobat, Exchange, and PostScript are tademarks of Adobe
Systems Inc. All other products or name brands are trademarks
of their respective holders.

Isamu "Sam" Ohzawa
FastIO Systems - Fast Direct PDF Generation via C
clibpdf@fastio.com, http://www.fastio.com/
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