From: Andreas Kähäri (akfreeshell.org)
Date: Tue Jul 15 2003 - 08:31:25 CDT

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On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 03:12:58PM +0200, Marc Espie wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 01:49:39PM +0100, Andreas Kähäri wrote:
> > On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 02:31:38PM +0200, Marc Espie wrote:
> > > On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 01:15:18PM +0100, Andreas Kähäri wrote:
> > > > Hi,
> > > >
> > > > I just built graphics/xfig (OpenBSD-current/i386) and found that
> > > > it depends on textproc/xpdf. Is there a thought behind this?
> > > > Sure, it comes with two PDF documents, but I'd rather read them
> > > > with the PDF viewer I already have installed. teTeX_texmf comes
> > > > with more documentation in PDF format without depending on a PDF
> > > > reader (good thing)...
> > > >
> > > > Just wondering.
> > >
> > > Xfig can export to pdf, which is one of the most useful formats these
> > > days.
> >
> > Well, so does LaTeX, but I don't see it depend on acroread or
> > gv or xpdf... Hmmm... and so does quite a few programs in the
> > ghostscript-7.05p1 port as well.
> >
> > Since PDF is one of the most useful document formats these days,
> > could you not assume that the users have a PDF reader installed
> > already, or that they will install one if they needs to view the
> > PDF results?
> >
> > Besides, I'm not sure xfig is used for generating PDF output
> > that often. I'm fairly certain it's more often used for
> > generating EPS files for inclusion in LaTeX documents, or JPEG
> > for incusion on web pages etc...
>
> You're completely confused. neither teTeX nor ghostscript depend on xpdf
> because they *include* pdf support code. pdflatex works without needing
> xpdf. ghostscript *is* a pdf visualization tool.

So xfig depends on xpdf for PDF support code.

>
> We're definitely not talking about xpdf as a visualization tool.

Ah, ok. So xfig uses xpdf to generate PDF? Maybe I am a bit
confused, I can only see utilitites for converting *from* PDF
files, or that operates on PDF file in that port.

> And, about using pdf as an output format, I don't know what worlds you live
> in, but pdf often is the most convenient format... even for TeX. quite a
> few people use pdf output directly, because it's much easier to acquire
> viewers for it within various OSes (and converting ps2pdf doesn't work that
> well, compared to the other way around).

Sure. I don't dispute that. I've never had any probelms with
ps2pdf though, you just need to use the right type of fonts in
the PS-file...

A

--
Andreas Kähäri
Essex, England

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