[Groff] Re: gropdf driver (was: pdfroff produces two copies)

[Deri James]

On Tuesday 04 August 2009 19:58:04 Werner LEMBERG wrote:
> [Deri, I hope it's OK with you that I cite from your private email to
>  me.]
>

Fine.

>
> Some weeks ago Deri James sent me a first implementation of a gropdf
> driver; I've uploaded it temporarily to
>
>   http://groff.ffii.org/groff/gropdf/
>
> Deri writes:
>
>   [...] Its drawback is its written in perl and has a dependancy on
>   perl module Compress::Zlib (to do the Flate compression).  However,
>   despite this, you may consider it useful to have a 'native' PDF
>   driver for groff (rather than the PS -> ghostscript route).  It is
>   slower than grops but faster than grops+gs.
>
>   The archive contains bin/gropdf (which should be installed in the
>   same directory as 'grops'), /devpdf which should be installed in
>   your groff font directory, two files for the /tmac directory, and an
>   /examples directory.
>
>   NOTE: Lines 13-15 of 'gropdf' must be "hand edited" to configure for
>   your particular 'groff' setup.  Of course these paths would normally
>   be inserted by an install script.
>
>   The /devpdf directory includes the .pfa fonts required to supplement
>   the 14 PDF type 1 base fonts up to the standard 35 fonts which
>   PostScript uses.
>
>   Gropdf supports the following run switches:-
>
>   -p <papersize> (same as grops)
>   -l (landscape mode - NOT WORKING yet!!)
>   -d (debug mode - uncompressed PDF and troff output included as comments)
>   -F <path to 'font' directory (same as grops
>
>
>   TO DO
>
>   Fix landscape.

A new version of just 'gropdf' (i.e. you need the .tgz from Werner's site 
installed first, then replace) is here:-

<http://www.chuzzlewit.demon.co.uk/gropdf/>

Very little difference but landscape now works. :-)

(It actually contains a lot more code than the original I sent to Werner, 
which will hopefully allow individual PDF pages to be 'included' (in the same 
way grops allows an EPS to be embedded) - but not yet!!).

Any feedback will be appreciated.

Cheers

Deri