Difference between import and reading a PDF?

[Xhris]

Thanks for the info. But the only thing I don't think I understand now is: what is the difference between Adobe's PDF reader (Acrobat) and Adobe's PDF importer (bearing in mind that Xara's PDF importer is "at least as good as anything else out there")?

[remi]

Adobe's PDF importer

Is this another product from Adobe?

[Xhris]

Is this another product from Adobe?

Well, maybe I'm misunderstanding. I thought the reader and importer from Adobe were two separate things. If they aren't, then that would make more sense, and I'd understand what you meant by Adobe leaving everyone else out to swim.

[wall]

I think, it's not the same as Proteus offers: "Unlike many PDF rendering solutions, the Proteus One GFX PDF Filter is not a printer driver that reduces a complex design into an unscaleable, uneditable blob. The Proteus One GFX PDF Filter is a transform filter that converts image elements into their PDF equivalents. This means that lines, text, beziers curves and all other objects retain their precision and integrity. And because these image elements are faithfully reproduced, they can viewed, printed and edited with full fidelity." (source: http://www.proteusdatasystems.com/solutions/pdf)

Remi

Good point. But I still think pdfwizard has the technology, as its PDF Plus appears to be capable of resaving pdfs and still retains the vector graphics inside. But they probably will only license their printer driver to others. Anyway, I still think it may worth it for Xara to ask pdfwizard for a quote on the licensing...

[remi]

Well, maybe I'm misunderstanding. I thought the reader and importer from Adobe were two separate things. If they aren't, then that would make more sense, and I'd understand what you meant by Adobe leaving everyone else out to swim.

I don't know the sourcecode of Adobe Reader or other Adobe tools, but I assume that Adobe uses a company wide library (a class) that offers the functionality to import PDF files. If they are clever, they are able to use this library in each of their products (Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash...). So, I would assume, that there are no difference between the libraries of the Adobe Reader or Adobe Illustrator.

But, this applies only to Adobe so far. If you want to build your own application you have to develop your own library or have to pay license fees to use a library from another company to be able to import/export PDF files. Adobe offers a documentation about the PDF fileformat, but not the sourcecode of their import/export routines.

Besides commercial libraries to create PDF documents, there are also some Open Source libraries available, especially to include PDF export routines into Webapplications.

I hope, this clears things up.

Remi