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[Sindi Keesan <keesan AT iamjlamb.com>]

xpdf works with Slackware 7.1 xbin.tgz libraries and glibc2.2.5 from 
SW8.1.
For the non-X conversion programs you do not need xbin or any X packages.  
I extracted them and the man pages for them and the general explanations 
of XPDF from the 4.5 MB binary package at www.foolabs.com/xpdf and 
compressed the six pdf conversion programs (to text or images) to 30% 
using upx (they run just as fast but take up less space) and made a 
slackware package (requires glibc2.2.5) and posted it at
www.iamjlamb.com/~keesan, linked on my basiclinux page, as pdf-nonX.tgz.
I also left pdf.tgz, the older version which uses glibc2.1.3 and does not 
do pdf 1.5.

The same site has a link to the bmv from Debian which I repackaged, which 
can be used to view the ps file that you get as output from pdftops, 
obviating the need for xpdf, which is slower than ghostscript or bmv.


> > > xpdf from SW71 won't do pdf 1.5
> > 
> 
> I was going to look at the SW8.1 package except first I wrote Doug Kaufman 
> (who compiled the console parts of xpdf for us last year) and he informed 
> me that:
> 
> 1.  xpdf 3.0 is the first version to handle pdf 1.5 (the latest Adobe 6.0)
> and came out Jan 22, 2004, so probably is not what you find in SW8.1.
> 
> 2.  xpdf is available precompiled for linux already -4.55MB download from 
> www.foolabs.com/pub/xpdf.  It requires glibc 2.2 (SW8.1 provides glibc 
> 2.2.5 - just upgrade by installpkg the glibc 2.2.5 so file that is also 
> needed to run precompiled Opera 7).  It is statically linked to motif, 
> t1lib and Freetype 2 (which are provided in source frm in case you want to 
> compile your own version instead).  But as Doug said, why bother?  (Unless 
> of course you want to use xpdf in BL3, or in BL2 without upgrading glibc).
> 
> The console parts of xpdf (pdftops, pdftotext, pdfimages, pdfinfo) are 
> available precompiled for Win32  and for DOS (!) - 1.8MB.
> 
> There are fonts in various languages that you can add if you want to read 
> documents in other languages.  And I think it said that to get the basic 
> Roman fonts you need to have installed gs (or the fonts for it) first.
> 
> 3. AFPL (Aladdin) Ghostscript 8.14 does NOT do pdf 1.5, but version 8.30 
> beta (which will be released in a few weeks) does pdf 1.5.  Version 8.14 
> is the first to do encrypted pdf.  
> 
> It should be possible to use the pdftops from xpdf to convert any pdf 1.5,
> and then view or print it with gs 5.10 from SW7.1, optionally with bmv for
> better resolution in svgalib mode, assuming someone did not come up with a
> newer ps that also wont' work with older programs.
> 
> The SW81 ghostscript displays in X11 but not in vgalib.  SW71 displays in
> either, with X11 as the default (you can change the default, or specify
> the device command line with -sDEVICE=vgalib).  Hal sent me a list of
> devices supported by the gs 7.05 (?) compiled for SW91 and it does not
> appear to support ANY screen devices, just scads of printers and image
> formats, meaning if you want to view the pdf file, you need xpdf not gs, 
> or else possibly gs with a viewer such as GSview.
> 
> I have tried converting to an image and viewing but quality is lost.
> 
> Debian's gs 7 (or maybe it was 6.5) supports svgalib.  From looking at the 
> source code for gs 8.14, I cannot find any mention of a screen output (X11 
> or otherwise) as the device, but it can be used in X with GSview (in linux 
> or even in Win32).
> 
> I will wait and attempt to compile gs 8.30 for BL2 with library upgraded 
> to 2.2.5 (from SW81) and post that later.  
> 
> In the meantime I am working on convincing people to send me something 
> other than pdf 1.5 when they scan.  One company managed to reconvert to 
> what was supposed to be a more compressed format in Adobe 4.0 (pdf 1.4?) 
> which came out larger, but they are more clever than most.  Another 
> company sent me a tif after promising a gif, then wanted to send a jpeg, 
> then promised a WORD file (Antiword should be able to retrieve the 
> embedded pngs in a WORD file, says its author) but sent RTF.  Our fax 
> machine was not behaving so she finally FedExed.
> 
> Is there some way, using linux, to get faxes emailed to one that can be 
> printed out at fax resolution somehow?  Someone else scanned at fax 
> resolution (200x200 or worse) which I printed at 300x300 and it looked 
> awful.  
> 
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