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Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2007 14:41:09 +0000
From: Chris Bowditch <bowditch_chris@hotmail.com>
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To: general@xmlgraphics.apache.org
Subject: Re: Fw: [DISCUSS] PDFBox proposal
References: <20071115074617.C24A.DEV@jeremias-maerki.ch>
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Jeremias Maerki wrote:

Hi Jeremias,

sorry for the slow reply.

> Yesterday, we've discussed a possible incubation of PDFBox at the ASF.
> There are several projects that are interested in such a move. For us
> here in the XML Graphics project, PDFBox is interesting due to its
> parsing functionality. Our own PDF library doesn't have that
> functionality and is instead optimized for writing PDF which PDFBox
> isn't.

I agree PDFBox would be a useful complimentary library to our own.

> 
> As you may know, I've implemented a FOP plug-in that allows embedding of
> PDF in newly generated PDF documents through XSL-FO. Using the same PDF
> library for both tasks would be beneficial in the long-term.

Yes agreed.

> 
> Please take a look at the incubation proposal (link below) we're
> currently writing. I have some questions to the XML Graphics community
> in this context:
> 
> - Should the XML Graphics PMC be the sponsoring entity? [1]

Yes, but I don't have any time to support such a process.

> - Can anyone besides me imagine investing time/resources to help with
> the incubation, teaching PDFBox additional tricks like we need them?

Sorry I just don't have enough time to help.

> - Can we imagine PDFBox becoming a subproject of XML Graphics after
> successful incubation? PDF is not really an XML technology but deals
> with graphical output. Newer technologies like XPS (Microsoft's XML
> paper specification) and Adobe's Mars are XML-based paged document
> formats. Not that they play a big role in the market, yet.

I am starting to hear clients talking about XPS.

> 
> [1] Makes sense if we have a strong interest in PDFBox. If it's just me,
> then it doesn't make sense and we're going to find a different solution.
> 
> Please note: We have some functionality overlap between our PDF library
> and PDFBox in any case. Examples:
> - Writing PDF (org.apache.fop.pdf)

Since our library is optimized for this, we probably should just leave 
the writing to FOP's PDF Library.

> - Parsing fonts (org.apache.fop.fonts, org.apache.batik.svggen.font.table)
> - Font conversion (org.apache.batik.svggen.font)
> - XMP metadata (org.apache.xmlgraphics.xmp)
> - Image loading (org.apache.fop.image, org.apache.batik.ext.awt.image.spi)
> 
> BTW, the above table shows some spots where we could actually discuss
> better cooperation within XML Graphics, i.e. between Batik & FOP.

Merging the other packages will be more of a challenge to ensure the end 
result has the best that all projects have to offer.

> 
> Thoughts?

I vote +1 in favour but as already mentioned I can't help in this process.

Chris

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