FreeTDS Development Group

["Lowden, James K" <LowdenJK AT bernstein.com>]

> From: Sam Denton [mailto:denton AT wantec.com]
> Sent: June 11, 2002 4:06 PM
> 
> Also, when viewed in Acrobat 5.5, the ink seems to be a 
> little high on the
> page, i.e. the header is overlapping the top edge of the paper and the
> footer (page number) has a huge amount of whitespace between 
> it and the
> lower edge.
> 
> Minor nits:  The thumbnails are all blank.  Clicking on page 
> number in the
> TOC doesn't do anything.  There's no index.  None of the URLs 
> are "live".

Sam, all the rendering tools are free software.  I noticed what you did,
too, that the "ink is a little high".  That might be adjustable.  As for the
lack of "liveliness", it's a result of how the pdf is formed.  First, the
docbook is converted to postscript, then the ps is converted to pdf with
ghostscript.  (At least, that's what I would have done.)  Because postscript
is strictly a page definition language, it contains no notion of a "table of
contents" or hyperlinks per se, which is why the pdf file acts like paper.  

Your observations are good criticism.  I'm not aware of any better free
sgml->pdf converter, something that would retain/convert the links recorded
in the base document.  But like Ross Perot said, "I'm all ears".  If there's
a better way, I say we use it.  In fact, if someone posts a better pdf file,
no matter how done, I'd put it on the website.  

Regards, 

--jkl