About the PDF format's lack of support in a variety of applications:
I'm vaguely familiar with the PDF format... My guess as to why it's not supported by many applications is that 1) it's kind of difficult to write, and 2) why use it if you already have post-script and a utility like ps2pdf?
I've read some of the FOP Java src, and let me tell you, the PDF formatter is inscrutable to my untrained eye. The file spec involves a lot of angle brackets single letter "keys" and byte offsets. It's truly NOT a human readable format. Post-Script, on the other hand, is managable at a certain level as human readable.
I will admit that Adobe has been less than kind about sharing their PDF generating libraries. Currently they're available to some select business partners, probably at a hefty fee. Then there are a few third party libraries like PDFlib, and iText, and a bunch I can't remember... I don't think that the FOP PDF formatter is generalizable (?) I think it needs an area tree (xsl thingy) as an input, but don't quote me on that.
There are a million and a half post-script libraries out there, many of them free, many of which fail to suck. Of course that dosn't get many of us any closer to "Export > PDF" in xfig, or whatever...
As a closing remark regarding the start of this thread: I'd like to blame the people who generate those offensive PDFs rather than Adobe. Adobe may not have the Linux community's interests in mind, but I don't think they've gone out of their way to screw us. It is certainly still possible to generate PDFs that wont break in acroread, ghostview, or xpdf, but the windoze-centric user, of which there are many, is ready and willing to use Verdona since they're told, and they believe it's "standard."
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About the PDF format's lack of support in a variety of applications: I'm vaguely familiar with the PDF format... My guess as to why it's not supported by many applications is that 1) it's kind of difficult to write, and 2) why use it if you already have post-script and a utility like ps2pdf? I've read some of the FOP Java src, and let me tell you, the PDF formatter is inscrutable to my untrained eye. The file spec involves a lot of angle brackets single letter "keys" and byte offsets. It's truly NOT a human readable format. Post-Script, on the other hand, is managable at a certain level as human readable. I will admit that Adobe has been less than kind about sharing their PDF generating libraries. Currently they're available to some select business partners, probably at a hefty fee. Then there are a few third party libraries like PDFlib, and iText, and a bunch I can't remember... I don't think that the FOP PDF formatter is generalizable (?) I think it needs an area tree (xsl thingy) as an input, but don't quote me on that. There are a million and a half post-script libraries out there, many of them free, many of which fail to suck. Of course that dosn't get many of us any closer to "Export > PDF" in xfig, or whatever... As a closing remark regarding the start of this thread: I'd like to blame the people who generate those offensive PDFs rather than Adobe. Adobe may not have the Linux community's interests in mind, but I don't think they've gone out of their way to screw us. It is certainly still possible to generate PDFs that wont break in acroread, ghostview, or xpdf, but the windoze-centric user, of which there are many, is ready and willing to use Verdona since they're told, and they believe it's "standard."