[tex-live] Is this a real PNG/pdfTeX error in TL2004? Or Mac OSXonly?

George N. White III aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca
Wed Nov 17 15:28:46 CET 2004


On Tue, 16 Nov 2004, Akira Kakuto wrote:

> Gerben Wierda wrote:
>
>> Given that this is the case. Is this a bug serious enough to warrant a
>> fix before production?

No, but consider building pdftex without png (and other image formats)
in the future.  There is a big industry exploiting bugs in image
libraries that result in too much churn.  Image manipulations, including
conversion to pdf, are best done elsewhere.  I view the png support
in pdftex as a convenience, but even a great convenience to me is not
worth a minute of the time of the people who maintain pdftex and the
distros.  I'd rather see pdftex issue an informative message when
someone tries to use a graphics library:

   "This version of pdftex does not support inclusion of XXX images.
    Consider using other tools to convert your images to PDF format."

> Hartmut says that a workaround is
> pngtopnm png-example.png | pnmtopng >png-noalpha.png

Or use a png->pdf tool, of which there are many that are well
supported by people who know knowing about TeX.  This

--
George N. White III  <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
   Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada



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