[pdftex] How to change Producer value?

[Heiko Oberdiek]

On Sun, Feb 16, 2003 at 11:41:22PM +0100, Hans Hagen wrote:

> At 11:30 PM 2/15/2003 +0100, Heiko Oberdiek wrote:
> >  My suggested patch tries to detect keys, set by the user,
> >and supresses then the default values, see my other postings
> >for details to avoid "undefined" states of the PDF file.
> 
> the producer is pdftex and should not be changed; i can imagine extending 
> the description (pdftex ...) but as you rightfully say, it's no shame to 
> mention pdftex. Personally i also thing it's bad to overload/hide the name 
> 'pdftex', users should at least give tex/thanh this credit (instead of 
> pretending that they wrote the pdf producing program themself).

I think it is hopeless to prevent the last issue, because only
one byte need to be changed in the pdf file. Each beginner of
learning a programming language should be able to write a program
that applies the fix to the pdf file. Alternatively pdfTeX could
also be fixed easily.

> So, i wonder, does your patch replace /Producer or extend it?

For extension you would need a lot of more work
* Much more complicate parsing and chaning of the contents of \pdfinfo
  and/or a new command.
* The interface would change at user level (hyperref, ...).

I think, there are a lot of situations where the /Producer entry
can changed without not giving Thanh his credit:
* Extending, if other programs are participated in important way, eg:
  "pdfTeX ... with ...", "tool a 7.0, pdfTeX 1.10a", "pdfTeX, tool b"
* More or less version information:
  * omitting version number
  * adding marker of beta versions
* Other format, corrections, eg.: "pdfeTeX 1.10b",
  "pdfTeX by Han The Thanh", "pdfTeX 1.10b-beta-20030213", ...

The current behaviour without the patch results in an "undefined" PDF
file, not the best situation I think.

Yours sincerely
  Heiko <oberdiek at uni-freiburg.de>
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