Re: distributing precompiled binaries

["Giacomo A. Catenazzi" <cate@debian.org>]

Dave Howe wrote:
> MJ Ray wrote:
> > So where did the above "PDF and PS are programming languages" argument
> > come from?  References, please!
>
> PDF and PS *are* programming languages, and quite powerful ones.
> However, they are entirely interpreted - the output of a pdf "compiler"
> would be a static image, not a pdf document, as pdf is the source (if
> that makes sense)
>
> PDF and PS documents are often mechanically generated - they are
> transformed from some other document format - but that doesn't mean that
> they are "compiled code". The transform is more like a preprocessor pass
> - the output is still valid source, just not the same source as was
> originally written.

I think the discussion went off-topic.
The terms source language, compiler etc. are not so important in pure
technical term.

I think 90% of people agree that C code passed to an obfuscation
filter is not more "source" code, but it is still written in "C".
[But passing to "indent" is still source]

So we have the same mechanism with PS and PDF. Are the sources
easily modifiable? Are the sources in the form that "upstream"
would normally use to modify it?

So sometime PDF and PS are really sources (in legal term),
but most of time they are an intermediate (and obfuscated)
format.

ciao
	cate