If you use PDF::Writer, read this post!

ruby-talk
1

I'm getting very few requests for features to add to Prawn that exist
in PDF::Writer but not in Prawn.
Because it directly effects each and every user, I need to know what
this means. Please remember that I intend to *END ALL SUPPORT FOR
PDF::WRITER* after Prawn becomes PDF::Document, so long as there is a
sufficient mandate from the community.

= Are you happy with Prawn as it is and have already migrated your new
projects to it?

If so, you have your right to remain silent. But it'd be re-assuring
to hear from you to know that you're satisfied.

= Are there features you need that have not yet been implemented in
Prawn?

Please let me know know ASAP, within the next few weeks or so if
possible. Other uses should feel welcome to +1 these requests, so I
know how much of a demand there is. If you do this, there is a good
chance you'll see these in Prawn / PDF::Document 1.0

= Do you plan to keep on using PDF::Writer even though it's slated for
deprecation?

Don't. We won't even be handling bug fixes after this summer.

Or if there are enough people with this plan, please start talking to
me now. I'll get in touch with Austin and see what he thinks about
bringing in a new maintainer. But you should have a really good
reason for this. :slight_smile:

With luck, we'll have a broad adoption of Prawn and there will be
group hugs all around. But I'm trying to make this transition as
smooth as possible by planning ahead, so please help me by stating
your intentions.

-greg

PS: The urgency and intensity of this post is meant to be a bit
humorous, but also to emphasize the point that a change is in the
wind.

2

I'm getting very few requests for features to add to Prawn that exist
in PDF::Writer but not in Prawn.
Because it directly effects each and every user, I need to know what
this means. Please remember that I intend to *END ALL SUPPORT FOR
PDF::WRITER* after Prawn becomes PDF::Document, so long as there is a
sufficient mandate from the community.

Why rename it? Prawn is a nice name, while PDF::Document seems to
imply that there are other closely related PDF::* modules.

= Are you happy with Prawn as it is and have already migrated your new
projects to it?

If so, you have your right to remain silent. But it'd be re-assuring
to hear from you to know that you're satisfied.

I've written a prototype with Prawn and it was a pleasurable
experience. Nice API!

= Are there features you need that have not yet been implemented in
Prawn?

Being able to put more complex objects than just text into table
cells would be cool, as well as more options for table borders.
(I've used 0.3.0 so maybe this request is already obsolete.)

Please let me know know ASAP, within the next few weeks or so if
possible. Other uses should feel welcome to +1 these requests, so I
know how much of a demand there is. If you do this, there is a good
chance you'll see these in Prawn / PDF::Document 1.0

-greg

Stefan

···

2009/1/18 Gregory Brown <gregory.t.brown@gmail.com>:

3

Greg,

The last time I looked at Prawn (quiet a while ago) I don't remember
seeing the equivalent of add_text_wrap which became the basis for a
layout API I wrote which allowed one to define a series of text boxes
specifying x,y,width, height, and rotation angle and border and then
flow text into the first box and have it cascade through the rest. I'd
like to contribute something like this to Prawn, but it would be nice
if the fundamentals were there to support it. Did I miss the obvious
or does Prawn now support a function that allows one to flow text into
a box of specified width with the text which doesn't fit returned?

John-Mason

4

I'm getting very few requests for features to add to Prawn that exist
in PDF::Writer but not in Prawn.
Because it directly effects each and every user, I need to know what
this means. Please remember that I intend to *END ALL SUPPORT FOR
PDF::WRITER* after Prawn becomes PDF::Document, so long as there is a
sufficient mandate from the community.

Why rename it? Prawn is a nice name, while PDF::Document seems to
imply that there are other closely related PDF::* modules.

There are :slight_smile:

We've got PDF::Inspector and PDF::Reader. Both which are tentatively
planned to become part of the 'pdf' project.

http://rubyforge.org/projects/pdf

gem install pdf would get you all of them.
Note that I'll likely turn Prawn into PDF::Document by something
simple like this in the pdf gem:

module PDF; end
Prawn = PDF;
require "prawn"

Or something silly like that, at first. (Just off the top of my head,
I'm not sure the above actually works)

It may be possible to just keep Prawn as Prawn, but we'll see how it goes.

= Are you happy with Prawn as it is and have already migrated your new
projects to it?

If so, you have your right to remain silent. But it'd be re-assuring
to hear from you to know that you're satisfied.

I've written a prototype with Prawn and it was a pleasurable
experience. Nice API!

Awesome.

= Are there features you need that have not yet been implemented in
Prawn?

Being able to put more complex objects than just text into table
cells would be cool, as well as more options for table borders.
(I've used 0.3.0 so maybe this request is already obsolete.)

The former request is in high demand. I've been hoping for someone
else to nail it because I've suggested on the Prawn list how I'd like
to see it implemented and I feel it's a straightforward patch. So
far, no one has bit. I will implement this if no one does before
1.0, most likely.

The latter, we've got some things that are new, others not advertised.
Before I do more with the table stuff, I need to re-organize it a
bit, but it's coming. I usually ask for folks to file tickets for
stuff like this, but those two issues are burned into my brain well
enough and rest on me getting some stuff done before I can tackle them
anyway, so don't worry about it.

Of course, patches are welcome for both. :slight_smile:

-greg

···

On Sat, Jan 17, 2009 at 9:00 PM, Stefan Lang <perfectly.normal.hacker@gmail.com> wrote:

2009/1/18 Gregory Brown <gregory.t.brown@gmail.com>:

--
Technical Blaag at: http://blog.majesticseacreature.com
Non-tech stuff at: http://metametta.blogspot.com
"Ruby Best Practices" Book now in O'Reilly Roughcuts:
http://rubybestpractices.com

5

I describe how to do this here:

http://prawn.lighthouseapp.com/projects/9398/tickets/113-single-line-of-text

But maybe instead, Prawn::Document#text_box should return the
remaining parts of the string that were not rendered?
Aside from returning the remainder and handling rotation,
Prawn#text_box sounds exactly like what you've described here.

http://is.gd/h6x9

What do you think?

-greg

···

On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 5:45 PM, John-Mason P. Shackelford <jpshack@gmail.com> wrote:

Greg,

The last time I looked at Prawn (quiet a while ago) I don't remember
seeing the equivalent of add_text_wrap which became the basis for a
layout API I wrote which allowed one to define a series of text boxes
specifying x,y,width, height, and rotation angle and border and then
flow text into the first box and have it cascade through the rest. I'd
like to contribute something like this to Prawn, but it would be nice
if the fundamentals were there to support it. Did I miss the obvious
or does Prawn now support a function that allows one to flow text into
a box of specified width with the text which doesn't fit returned?

--
Technical Blaag at: http://blog.majesticseacreature.com
Non-tech stuff at: http://metametta.blogspot.com
"Ruby Best Practices" Book now in O'Reilly Roughcuts:
http://rubybestpractices.com

6

module Prawn
    module PDF
      class Document

The extra namespace ensures it can still be used without conflict
should another lib use the PDF namespace too. And one can do:

  include Prawn

to still use just

  PDF::Document

A 'shortcut' require can also be provided to automatically do the
including.

T.

···

On Jan 17, 9:13 pm, Gregory Brown <gregory.t.br...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Jan 17, 2009 at 9:00 PM, Stefan Lang > > <perfectly.normal.hac...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/1/18 Gregory Brown <gregory.t.br...@gmail.com>:
>> I'm getting very few requests for features to add to Prawn that exist
>> in PDF::Writer but not in Prawn.
>> Because it directly effects each and every user, I need to know what
>> this means. Please remember that I intend to *END ALL SUPPORT FOR
>> PDF::WRITER* after Prawn becomes PDF::Document, so long as there is a
>> sufficient mandate from the community.

> Why rename it? Prawn is a nice name, while PDF::Document seems to
> imply that there are other closely related PDF::* modules.

There are :slight_smile:

We've got PDF::Inspector and PDF::Reader. Both which are tentatively
planned to become part of the 'pdf' project.

http://rubyforge.org/projects/pdf

gem install pdf would get you all of them.
Note that I'll likely turn Prawn into PDF::Document by something
simple like this in the pdf gem:

module PDF; end
Prawn = PDF;
require "prawn"

Or something silly like that, at first. (Just off the top of my head,
I'm not sure the above actually works)

It may be possible to just keep Prawn as Prawn, but we'll see how it goes.

7

Greg,

If Prawn#text_box returned the remaining text and supported
justification (at least left and center) and rotation, I'd have what
I need.

John-Mason Shackelford

Software Development Coach
Pearson

2510 North Dodge St.
Iowa City, IA 52245
ph. 319-354-9200x6214
john-mason.shackelford@pearson.com
http://pearsonschool.com

8

Nah, it'd be mighty annoying to nest all my classes that way. I'm fine
with claiming the PDF namespace since I'm the current maintainer of
the Ruby PDF project (PDF::Writer), and one of the principle
developers on Prawn maintains PDF::Reader.

It will be up to other developers to avoid namespace collisions with
us, or alternatively, join forces and become part of the 'pdf' project
for Ruby.

-greg

···

On Sat, Jan 17, 2009 at 10:12 PM, Trans <transfire@gmail.com> wrote:

module Prawn
   module PDF
     class Document

The extra namespace ensures it can still be used without conflict
should another lib use the PDF namespace too. And one can do:

include Prawn

to still use just

PDF::Document

A 'shortcut' require can also be provided to automatically do the
including.

--
Technical Blaag at: http://blog.majesticseacreature.com
Non-tech stuff at: http://metametta.blogspot.com
"Ruby Best Practices" Book now in O'Reilly Roughcuts:
http://rubybestpractices.com

9

Good to know. Please file a ticket in lighthouse:
http://prawn.lighthouseapp.com/projects/9398-prawn

···

On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 9:46 PM, John-Mason P. Shackelford <jpshack@gmail.com> wrote:

Greg,

If Prawn#text_box returned the remaining text and supported
justification (at least left and center) and rotation, I'd have what
I need.

--
Technical Blaag at: http://blog.majesticseacreature.com
Non-tech stuff at: http://metametta.blogspot.com
"Ruby Best Practices" Book now in O'Reilly Roughcuts:
http://rubybestpractices.com

10

Does anybody use this stuff as an alternative to LaTeX?

···

On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 4:28 AM, Gregory Brown <gregory.t.brown@gmail.com>wrote:

On Sat, Jan 17, 2009 at 10:12 PM, Trans <transfire@gmail.com> wrote:

> module Prawn
> module PDF
> class Document
>
> The extra namespace ensures it can still be used without conflict
> should another lib use the PDF namespace too. And one can do:
>
> include Prawn
>
> to still use just
>
> PDF::Document
>
> A 'shortcut' require can also be provided to automatically do the
> including.

Nah, it'd be mighty annoying to nest all my classes that way. I'm fine
with claiming the PDF namespace since I'm the current maintainer of
the Ruby PDF project (PDF::Writer), and one of the principle
developers on Prawn maintains PDF::Reader.

It will be up to other developers to avoid namespace collisions with
us, or alternatively, join forces and become part of the 'pdf' project
for Ruby.

-greg

--
Technical Blaag at: http://blog.majesticseacreature.com
Non-tech stuff at: http://metametta.blogspot.com
"Ruby Best Practices" Book now in O'Reilly Roughcuts:
http://rubybestpractices.com

--
http://www.home.no/reddvinylene

11

I have a project that generates lout from ruby and then pdf from lout
- I've been meaning to port it over to prawn and drop the external
dependency. In general, I'd say that if you are machine-generating a
PDF, a ruby library would be a lot more convenient to use than
generating latex or lout or whatever.

martin

···

On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 3:32 PM, Redd Vinylene <reddvinylene@gmail.com> wrote:

Does anybody use this stuff as an alternative to LaTeX?

12

That's certainly not the goal, but actually Jamis Buck's
prawn-format[0] extension might get people close to some of the
complex needs you'd use LaTeX for. But of course, YMMV.

-greg

[0] http://github.com/jamis/prawn-format

···

On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 5:02 AM, Redd Vinylene <reddvinylene@gmail.com> wrote:

Does anybody use this stuff as an alternative to LaTeX?

--
Technical Blaag at: http://blog.majesticseacreature.com
Non-tech stuff at: http://metametta.blogspot.com
"Ruby Best Practices" Book now in O'Reilly Roughcuts:
http://rubybestpractices.com

13

Too true, too true. LaTeX gives me a headache.

···

On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 1:11 PM, Martin DeMello <martindemello@gmail.com>wrote:

On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 3:32 PM, Redd Vinylene <reddvinylene@gmail.com> > wrote:
> Does anybody use this stuff as an alternative to LaTeX?

I have a project that generates lout from ruby and then pdf from lout
- I've been meaning to port it over to prawn and drop the external
dependency. In general, I'd say that if you are machine-generating a
PDF, a ruby library would be a lot more convenient to use than
generating latex or lout or whatever.

martin

--
http://www.home.no/reddvinylene

14

Yes, the benefit of a pure-Ruby to PDF library is that there aren't
intermediate dependencies. Of course, thinks like LaTeX or lout, or
Postscript (via the very cool RGhost library) might have their
benefits in certain situations, and might kick our butts performance
wise.

But when you use Prawn (or PDF::Writer), you've got vanilla Ruby that
generates a complete PDF. The purists among us are sure to find that
appealing.

-greg

···

On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 7:11 AM, Martin DeMello <martindemello@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 3:32 PM, Redd Vinylene <reddvinylene@gmail.com> wrote:

Does anybody use this stuff as an alternative to LaTeX?

I have a project that generates lout from ruby and then pdf from lout
- I've been meaning to port it over to prawn and drop the external
dependency. In general, I'd say that if you are machine-generating a
PDF, a ruby library would be a lot more convenient to use than
generating latex or lout or whatever.

--
Technical Blaag at: http://blog.majesticseacreature.com
Non-tech stuff at: http://metametta.blogspot.com
"Ruby Best Practices" Book now in O'Reilly Roughcuts:
http://rubybestpractices.com

15

Redd Vinylene wrote:

Too true, too true. LaTeX gives me a headache.

Does anybody use this stuff as an alternative to LaTeX?

I have a project that generates lout from ruby and then pdf from lout
- I've been meaning to port it over to prawn and drop the external
dependency. In general, I'd say that if you are machine-generating a
PDF, a ruby library would be a lot more convenient to use than
generating latex or lout or whatever.

martin

While we're on the subject of PDFs, LaTeX, etc.

1. I use an open-source document writing tool called LyX
(http://www.lyx.org) to do nearly all of my documentation. It can
convert to and from almost any format that has an open-source library,
but its "core" is LaTeX and "pdflatex". Its internal format looks a lot
like LaTeX.

The primary scripting language in LyX is Python. Sorry, guys, the snakes
just got there first. :slight_smile: There is also an excellent package for doing
"literate programming" with LyX in the R programming language at

http://cran.fhcrc.org/contrib/extra/lyx/

I would like to be able to do literate programming with LyX as easily in
Ruby as I can in R or Python.

2. New features for Prawn aka PDF::Document? The PDF format includes the
ability to incorporate multimedia files "seamlessly" into a document.
One extremely impressive example of this is a format called "U3D". This
allows you to incorporate a 3D object in a PDF with very little space
cost, and you can rotate the object, change the lighting on it, etc.
There's a stunning example of the capabilities of this at

And the code to make it is at

http://www.tug.org/texshowcase/Laurana_tex.zip

I'm sure the tools in PDF::Document can easily get a U3D into a PDF, or
if not, could be extended to do so easily. But what I'd really like is a
set of Ruby libraries / classes for making the U3Ds from data! Right
now, it looks like the main open source package for making U3Ds is
Meshlab, which is at

http://meshlab.sourceforge.net/

See also

http://vcg.sourceforge.net/

···

On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 1:11 PM, Martin DeMello <martindemello@gmail.com>wrote:

On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 3:32 PM, Redd Vinylene <reddvinylene@gmail.com> >> wrote:

--
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

I've never met a happy clam. In fact, most of them were pretty steamed.

16

2. New features for Prawn aka PDF::Document? The PDF format includes the
ability to incorporate multimedia files "seamlessly" into a document.
One extremely impressive example of this is a format called "U3D". This
allows you to incorporate a 3D object in a PDF with very little space
cost, and you can rotate the object, change the lighting on it, etc.
There's a stunning example of the capabilities of this at

http://www.tug.org/texshowcase/Laurana.pdf

This wouldn't load in OS X Preview. Interesting to see this stuff
used, I saw brief mentions of this in the PDF specs, but I was sort of
expecting it was unused and unsupported across many viewers. The
former I've apparently been proven wrong on, the latter, I think might
be right. What viewers support this?

And the code to make it is at

http://www.tug.org/texshowcase/Laurana_tex.zip

I'm sure the tools in PDF::Document can easily get a U3D into a PDF, or
if not, could be extended to do so easily. But what I'd really like is a
set of Ruby libraries / classes for making the U3Ds from data! Right
now, it looks like the main open source package for making U3Ds is
Meshlab, which is at

http://meshlab.sourceforge.net/

See also

http://vcg.sourceforge.net/

You'd need to write an extension, but it might not be too hard. I
haven't researched it at all, honestly. You might look at the PDF
spec[0]. It'd be neat to see an extension that did this, and I'd
expose the necessary bits to make sure it was possible to do
externally, but I'm sure this wouldn't be part of core Prawn, and I
hesitate to say whether it'd be part of the 'official' project. It
seems like a better home for it might be SciRuby or something like
that. We'd of course help promote the use of the tool and help with
the Prawn specific details, but beyond that, this seems a bit
specialized for what we're trying to keep a small and simple library.
Please do look into this though, and feel free to discuss it on the
Prawn list in hopes of finding other interested parties.

-greg

[0] http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pdf/pdf_reference.html

···

On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 11:52 AM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb@cesmail.net> wrote:

--
Technical Blaag at: http://blog.majesticseacreature.com
Non-tech stuff at: http://metametta.blogspot.com
"Ruby Best Practices" Book now in O'Reilly Roughcuts:
http://rubybestpractices.com

17

Acrobat is the only one I know, which sucks. I've been wanting to embed multimedia in our books for a while, but the fact that most readers won't display the stuff correctly has held us back.

Dave

···

On Jan 18, 2009, at 11:59 AM, Gregory Brown wrote:

http://www.tug.org/texshowcase/Laurana.pdf

This wouldn't load in OS X Preview. Interesting to see this stuff
used, I saw brief mentions of this in the PDF specs, but I was sort of
expecting it was unused and unsupported across many viewers. The
former I've apparently been proven wrong on, the latter, I think might
be right. What viewers support this?

18

Gregory Brown wrote:

2. New features for Prawn aka PDF::Document? The PDF format includes the
ability to incorporate multimedia files "seamlessly" into a document.
One extremely impressive example of this is a format called "U3D". This
allows you to incorporate a 3D object in a PDF with very little space
cost, and you can rotate the object, change the lighting on it, etc.
There's a stunning example of the capabilities of this at

http://www.tug.org/texshowcase/Laurana.pdf

This wouldn't load in OS X Preview. Interesting to see this stuff
used, I saw brief mentions of this in the PDF specs, but I was sort of
expecting it was unused and unsupported across many viewers. The
former I've apparently been proven wrong on, the latter, I think might
be right. What viewers support this?

As far as I can tell, only Acrobat Reader on Linux. There may be others
on Windows and Macs, but I have only played with it on Linux.

And the code to make it is at

http://www.tug.org/texshowcase/Laurana_tex.zip

I'm sure the tools in PDF::Document can easily get a U3D into a PDF, or
if not, could be extended to do so easily. But what I'd really like is a
set of Ruby libraries / classes for making the U3Ds from data! Right
now, it looks like the main open source package for making U3Ds is
Meshlab, which is at

http://meshlab.sourceforge.net/

See also

http://vcg.sourceforge.net/

You'd need to write an extension, but it might not be too hard. I
haven't researched it at all, honestly. You might look at the PDF
spec[0]. It'd be neat to see an extension that did this, and I'd
expose the necessary bits to make sure it was possible to do
externally, but I'm sure this wouldn't be part of core Prawn, and I
hesitate to say whether it'd be part of the 'official' project. It
seems like a better home for it might be SciRuby or something like
that. We'd of course help promote the use of the tool and help with
the Prawn specific details, but beyond that, this seems a bit
specialized for what we're trying to keep a small and simple library.
Please do look into this though, and feel free to discuss it on the
Prawn list in hopes of finding other interested parties.

Actually, I do think "data -> U3D" needs a separate project. I haven't
been following the "scientific computing in Ruby" projects much in the
past two years, so I don't know what's "new". But I would think Prawn
should definitely be able to take a U3D into a PDF. The fact that my
search for "open source U3D creators" essentially dead-ends at Meshlab
leads me to believe that it (or its core, VCG) is the only game in town.

But it might be relatively easy to get a Ruby interface to VCG using SWIG.

···

On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 11:52 AM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky > <znmeb@cesmail.net> wrote:

-greg

[0] http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pdf/pdf_reference.html

--
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

I've never met a happy clam. In fact, most of them were pretty steamed.

19

If you're talking about the technical possibility, yes, since it's
specified by Adobe, it can be done, I imagine. And a third-party gem
to do this (prawn-u3d), would be welcome.

But if you're talking about how we should include this feature because
it's an important feature for a PDF generator, well.. I disagree
there. I have no plans to fully support the PDF specification (it's
massive), and the fact that there are no open-source (or even
commercial) applications that seem to support this feature other than
Adobe's own acrobat reader makes me very uninterested in supporting it
directly in Prawn.

-greg

···

On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 10:16 PM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb@cesmail.net> wrote:

Gregory Brown wrote:

  We'd of course help promote the use of the tool and help with
the Prawn specific details, but beyond that, this seems a bit
specialized for what we're trying to keep a small and simple library.
Please do look into this though, and feel free to discuss it on the
Prawn list in hopes of finding other interested parties.

But I would think Prawn should definitely be able to take a U3D into a > PDF.