[pdftex] pdftex compliance..

[Y&Y Support]

At 10:42 2001-08-06 +0200, Hans Hagen wrote:
>At 10:11 AM 8/5/2001 -0400, Y&Y Support wrote:
>
>>There have been other such problems with other PDF
>>generating software in the past (except with Distiller).
>
>hm, but in your docs [and mails] you always claim that your tools make 
>thinsg safe for distiller, which means that distiller is also not perfect.

Yes, you do notice every detail :-)
We believe that it is possible to produce PS that may case some
version of Distiller to emit "bad" PDF
(e.g. PDF that makes the Acrobat Reader unhappy or even
causes Distiller to misbehave).

>Also, i still remember the days that i was sending buggy pdf produced by 
>distiller to adobe.

Yes, we also have over the years discovered maybe a dozen or so
bugs in Distiller.  Which caused us to change what PS output is
generated, and send bug messages to Adobe, which at the best
of times made a big difference and in more common case was
a waste of energy.

Overall, however, the number of bugs in Distiller
is incredibly low when compared to other software of that complexity
(we won't even mention stuff like MS Word :-)

And most of the bugs
we ran across are pretty obscure.  Also, fortunately typically old
bugs go away and do not come back.  This is in distinction to other
software, including software from Adobe, were bugs reappear on
a regular basis.  I suspect that: (i) Acrobat Distiller has some especially
good people working on it, (ii) some of these people actually stay with
Distiller, as opposed to a new crew starting up each revision and
remaking the same errors,  (iii) there is a record of old problems
to consult when working on the new version, (iv) there is a data base
of "difficult" PS files from previous testing that the new one has to
be able to deal with, and so on --- basically good management of
software development --- something apparently lacking in many
other projects, including Acrobat Reader, Adobe Type Manager
(well until the last few years anyway), Adobe Illustrator etc.
(and even something like Mac OS).

Regards, Louis.

http://www.YandY.com/acrobat5.htm


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