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Printer Emulation
http://www.retrosoftware.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=176		 Page 2 of 2
Author:  Samwise [ Thu Sep 18, 2008 11:28 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Printer Emulation
ThomasHarte wrote:
I'll correct my code tonight and try to get a Linux distribution going in a virtual machine in order to increase my testing base.

Can I recommend you try out VirtualBox, I use it daily and it's a really useful (and completely free bit of software). Ubuntu is probably a good distribution to just get up and use quickly.

ThomasHarte wrote:
Since there doesn't seem to be any PDF validation software and the PDF specs are around 1,000 pages long, I'm likely to make several more stupid mistakes like this before this output is bulletproof.

I'll be surprised if there aren't any PDF validation tools. How about this one?

If not, Google throws up loads of others.

I'm quite happy to test out any other PDFs you throw at me, with KPDF or KGhostView, if you need it.

Sam.
Author:  ThomasHarte [ Thu Sep 18, 2008 12:21 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Printer Emulation
Samwise wrote:
Can I recommend you try out VirtualBox, I use it daily and it's a really useful (and completely free bit of software). Ubuntu is probably a good distribution to just get up and use quickly.

Oh, I have a license for Parallels (actually, two licenses since I bought one because I wanted the software then got another as part of one of those MacBundle-type offers). I had Ubuntu set up a while ago and was very impressed, but wasn't using it enough to justify the disk space.
Samwise wrote:
ThomasHarte wrote:
Since there doesn't seem to be any PDF validation software and the PDF specs are around 1,000 pages long, I'm likely to make several more stupid mistakes like this before this output is bulletproof.

I'll be surprised if there aren't any PDF validation tools. How about this one?

If not, Google throws up loads of others.

Obviously you've found one and therefore done better than I did, but I really should have qualified that as "there doesn't seem to be any free PDF validation software". In my defence, the first two pages of Google results are links to commercial products from companies like 3-Heights, LuraDocument and SilverWind. Adding "free" to my search just seems to get me a lot of forum posts querying the existence of free validation tools and not getting helpful replies, and some of those useless catalogue websites that just throw together any old rubbish content they think will look good to Google and surround it in adverts.
Samwise wrote:
I'm quite happy to test out any other PDFs you throw at me, with KPDF or KGhostView, if you need it.

Sam.

Hopefully with a validator at my disposal, the next ones will be perfect. I'm a very optimistic person!
Author:  DaveF [ Fri Sep 19, 2008 9:54 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Printer Emulation
I've never done any PDF stuff before so forgive me if this completely idiotic, but it sounds like you have a Mac. Is there perhaps a way you can use their Cocoa libraries to create some PDF content and then compare it to yours?
Author:  ThomasHarte [ Fri Sep 19, 2008 7:37 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Printer Emulation
Please see the attached (zipped) PDF file for my latest progress. Having checked out the PDF validator linked and performed a more thorough internet search, I've been able to check this file much more thoroughly than the one before. Sadly those validators are very literal in their interpretation of the word; both of them returned 'invalid' for the previous PDF with no further exposition. Now they both return 'valid', so that's nice. What I was really hoping for was the PDF equivalent of the W3C HTML validator, but I guess you can't have everything.

Oh, the Mac is very PDF-oriented, but I'm using some relatively obscure parts of the PDF file format (specifically, Postscript Type 3 fonts) that it won't be (since it doesn't ship with any Type 3 fonts, given that no-one's created a standalone Type 3 font in probably 20 years). If you download the attached PDF then you'll probably notice that it draws very slowly indeed. That's because of the encoding method I'm using; it should improve dramatically in future versions. File size is also due for a sizeable reduction.

Attachments:
Electron Printer Output.pdf 2.zip [1.25 MiB]
Downloaded 9 times
Author:  DaveJ [ Fri Sep 19, 2008 7:53 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Printer Emulation
Sadly this file caused a crash for me. However it does actually display before crashing, which is an improvement on the previous file.

I am using Adobe Acrobat Reader 9.0 on Windows XP Home.

EDIT: I've looked some more, and it crashes the reader the first time it loads, but afterwards it will display. I suspect there's a memory handling problem with the Acrobat Reader, rather than a problem with your .pdf.
Author:  Samwise [ Fri Sep 19, 2008 7:54 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Printer Emulation
Works like a charm with both KPDF or KGhostView. The latter draws very slowly as you say, but KPDF is actually pretty nippy.

Sam.
Author:  DavidP [ Fri Aug 21, 2009 6:04 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Printer Emulation
That PDF some are having problems with... XP x64 and Acrobat Reader 6 (and 6gb memory) - displays perfectly.


Newer isn't always better ;)
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