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PhilterPaper / Perl-PDF-Builder

Extended version of the popular PDF::API2 Perl-based PDF library for creating, reading, and modifying PDF documents
https://www.catskilltech.com/FreeSW/product/PDF%2DBuilder/title/PDF%3A%3ABuilder/freeSW_full
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Mention Text::PDF in the history lesson #75

Closed cpansprout closed 7 years ago

cpansprout commented 7 years ago

I would suggest you mention that PDF::API2 was actually a fork of Text::PDF. (If you care about such trivia.)

(These forks seem to breed like rabbits. Forkitis. :-)

PhilterPaper commented 7 years ago

I do seem to vaguely recall reading something about Text::PDF->PDF::API[2], but I can't find it now. I hesitate to add it to the "history lesson" without an authoritative source to back it up. Text::PDF only goes back (on CPAN, anyway) to 2006, while PDF::API2 goes back to 2001. If you can point me to some documentation that PDF::API2 (or PDF::API) sprang from Text::PDF, I'll be happy to mention it. Were you involved with Text::PDF?

cpansprout commented 7 years ago

No, I was not involved in it. I just noticed that some of the source code is identical. Also, the oldest version of Text::PDF is actually from 1999 (see http://backpan.perl.org/authors/id/M/MH/MHOSKEN/).

And digging around backpan a bit more, I see that http://backpan.perl.org/authors/id/A/AR/AREIBENS/PDF-API2-0.2.0.2_dev.tar.gz includes a readme.txt that says:

This module is 'The Next Generation' of Text::PDF::API which initially 
provided a nice API around the Text::PDF::* modules created by Martin Hosken.

So it seems it was originally a wrapper around Text::PDF that eventually incorporated all of the latter’s functionality (some of it apparently by copy & paste).

PhilterPaper commented 7 years ago

OK, I have added this information to Builder.pm. Thanks for the Heads Up. It will be in the next release.

So it seems it was originally a wrapper around Text::PDF that eventually incorporated all of the latter’s functionality (some of it apparently by copy & paste).

Hey, if you gotta steal, steal from the best! :) Actually, there's a lot of evidence for copy & paste in PDF::API2 -- several of us found several routines where the author had copied another routine's code, but failed to update some variables inside, resulting in bugs.

(These forks seem to breed like rabbits. Forkitis. :-)

I wish I didn't have to make a fork -- I would have much rathered contributed to PDF::API2. However, Steve Simms is in the habit of simply discarding any submitted changes large enough that he can't be bothered to look through the code. That's a shame.