[Pkg-cups-devel] Bug#658004: cups-pdf: Generate more accessible PDFs

[Martin-Éric Racine]

On Thu, 01 Mar 2012 15:40:43 +0100 "Volker C. Behr" <behr at physik.uni-wuerzburg.de> wrote:
> On 03/01/12 14:03, Brian Potkin wrote:
> > Followup-For: Bug #658004
> >
> >
> > https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cups-pdf/+bugs
> >
> > The really interesting discussion is in #820820 but you'll want to read
> > #942866 too. The essence is that desktop applications output in PDF and
> > jobs from lp/lpr are converted to PDF by CUPS. The extra processing by
> > cups-pdf with Ghostscript may produce a less than optimal PDF.
> 
> I am aware that some desktop applications output in PDF - but not all 
> (CUPS-PDF is not developed specifically for Linux). So I cannot assume a 
> PDF workflow. Furthermore, not re-processing the PDF doesn't allow to 
> change e.g. the PDF version.
> Finally, if you already have a PDF you like as native output of your 
> application - why not simply use that one?

I think that the main issue with our pdf2pdf usage is that it tends to
systematically convert PDF documents containing text into one gigantic
image, thus losing the possibility to copy/paste/search text content. If
there is a pdf2pdf option that we can leverage to avoid this loss, then
we really should use it by default.

Martin-Éric