On 19-Mar-01 Hall Stevenson wrote: > Ultimately, if you want to edit anything, you need the original. I > don't think you can even create a PDF "from scratch" or from nothing. > You have to start with another file. Well, in fact you can, if you understand the PDF format (which is far from easy), since a valid PDF file can be written as ASCII text -- even one which includes graphics and fancy fonts. A PDF document in ASCII looks a bit like XML, only with different words. An example is attached (base64-encoded to avois line breaks). Admittedly I created it by converting the PostScript source for an example in the Blue Book, for which the source is: %!PS-Adobe-3.0 /inch {72 mul} def /wedge { newpath %% rgbR rgbG rgbB setrgbcolor 0 0 moveto 1 0 translate 15 rotate 0 15 sin translate 0 0 15 sin -90 90 arc closepath} def gsave %%0 inch 0 inch translate 3 inch 4 inch translate 0.5 inch 0.5 inch scale 0.02 setlinewidth 1 1 12 { 12 div setgray gsave wedge gsave fill grestore 0 setgray stroke grestore 30 rotate } for grestore showpage but, as you can see from the PDF file, I could in principle have simply typed it once I had worked out what to type. Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 284 7749 Date: 20-Mar-01 Time: 00:04:11 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
Attachment:
rose.pdf
Description: Binary data