Re: PDF grief - was Re: Flash is open?
On Fri, 2010-05-14 at 14:22 -0500, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:
> On Friday 14 May 2010 13:40:35 John A. Sullivan III wrote:
> > On Fri, 2010-05-14 at 06:31 -0500, Ron Johnson wrote:
> > > On 05/14/2010 06:14 AM, John A. Sullivan III wrote:
> > > > On Fri, 2010-05-14 at 06:52 +0000, Camaleón wrote:
> > > >> Look at PDF. PDF became a ISO/IEC standard but we (at linux) still
> > > >> lack for a PDF editor that can compete with Acrobat Professional.
> > > >
> > > > That comment really strikes home. We are working on a potential major
> > > > Windows desktop replacement project. The two things that are
> > > > absolutely killing us are email and a viable substitute for Acrobat
> > > > Standard. We can roughly mimic everything Acrobat does
> > >
> > > Forms, you mean?
> >
> > No, editing the PDF file, e.g., adding text, stamps, markups.
> >
> > They can't run their business if the functionality is missing with no
> > viable workaround. Editing a page at a time in GIMP, editing a page at
> > a time in Inkscape and watching it crash on large construction drawings
> > after consuming 3GB of RAM, importing a page at a time in Scribus only
> > to have it display anything half the time, seeing negative images or
> > text flowing over the margins in OpenOffice pdfimport, the ability to
> > only add text in pdfedit, xournal, or flpsed, deskewing and OCR in
> > gscan2pdf really aren't viable options.
>
> That's the most cogent argument I've heard for paying for Adobe Acrobat (or
> whatever they call it now) for now, and donating *at least* as many resources
> toward and professional F(L)OSS PDF editor.
Yes, exactly. We are hoping that, as we build our business and become
cash positive, a part of our profits can be used to shore up those areas
where FOSS is still weak as a desktop solution. We have just put out
and received a response to our first bounty for fixing Kontact in KDE
3.5 so it is robust enough for Enterprise use and integration with
Zimbra. A viable PDF editor is high on our list - John
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