Re: Word attachment...on linuxtoday

[Bernhard Herzog <bh intevation de>]

Charles Iliya Krempeaux <tnt linux ca> writes:

> On Sat, 2002-01-12 at 13:34, Franck Martin wrote:
> 
> > By the way PDF do not understand transparency it seems.
> 
> I'm pretty sure it does.

Yes. Since PDF 1.4. However, this particular feature of PDF (as well as
some others) is covered by Adobe patents:
http://partners.adobe.com/asn/developer/legalnotices.html

According to that page Adobe licenses the patents "on a royalty-free,
non-exclusive basis for the term of each patent". But only "for the sole
purpose of developing software that produces, consumes, and interprets
PDF files that are compliant with the Specification".

Note that it probably means that the license may not valid for e.g. a
general purpose vector drawing program unless perhaps the only format it
can read and write is PDF.

Plus, there's one patent, which IIRC does not refer to transparency, is
only licensed for "the sole purpose of developing software that produces
PDF files that are compliant with the Specification (specifically
excluding, however, software that consumes and/or interprets PDF files)".

> As far as I know though, no one is developing a good and fast (Free)
> vector graphics engine. 

As far as the rendering part is concerned, the X Render Extension seems
to be a good start.

  Bernhard

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