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hankivy / text2pdf2

An enhanced version of text2pdf, as in the PDF::API2 perl module at https://cpan.org
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Lacks backwards compatibility, or hooks for control values with more than one line #9

Open hankivy opened 5 years ago

hankivy commented 5 years ago

We do not have backwards compatibility. Any text that looks like control data (font or image specification) is treated that way. There is no way to say just print it all as text.

All of the control data for fonts, images, and extensions for graphics are just text in a single line. This lacks flexibility, and readability in the event of a very long line.

We want a command line parameter that allows for changing syntax. Commands with only old parameters could default to just printing the text file in PDF as-is, like the original code.

PhilterPaper commented 3 years ago

One way might be to have a dummy "tag" that just says "this is continuation text from the previous line." Another would be to formalize some sort of syntax similar to troff, where .name in column 1 signals a control sequence, and otherwise it's assumed to be a continuation from the previous line. Still another would be to use an HTML-like embedded sequence, similar to Text::Layout.

If you're going to have your control words in column 1, that mandates that you have some way of gluing together sentence fragments (each could be a different font and/or font size) and flowing them into paragraphs. It's not trivial!

PhilterPaper commented 3 years ago

Hank, unless this project is a labor of love, which you're doing for the fun of doing it, you might want to consider already-existing tools if you're simply looking to end up with a useful tool to do some markup text processing. I understand that groff can output PDF, as can LaTeX (PDFLaTeX). Of course, if the intent is to be inventive and maybe in the process come up with a tool others will find useful, go right on ahead!