Re: gpdf

[Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>]

Jeff mentioned accessibility in the gpdf context.

Actually PDF is an area of great interest to a11y; but PDF files
themselves, though theoretically sometimes accessible (via some special
accessible-content stuff in PDF 1.4), are in practice not accessible on
*nix.  That's 'cause so far only the Adobe Wintel PDF readers are
handling the accessibility extensions in the content.

I think that we might have a possibility of fixing this; lots of people
would be *real* excited if we did.  At that point then there would be
reason to make sure the gpdf UI was itself accessible, and we'd need to
export the textual info that we got from the accessibility extensions in
the content.

I don't think pdflib supports any of that yet, so creating accessible
PDF files is another unsolved problem in the *nix world.  But it's a
very hot topic, since it's one major area where GNOME can't yet compete
with Wintel accessibility-wise.  On the other hand, the inherent
accessibility of PDF is hotly disputed, but at least we want to be able
to make what accessibility info is available (in those files that
support it) viewable by the user.

-Bill

-- 
Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>