[pdftex] Tip: pdfanim

[Jochen Skupin]

Dear Enrique,


many thanks for your comments on PDFAnim.

You wrote:
> Hi,  I have been trying your pdfanim package.  I have long been
> looking for something like this.  Thanks!
I've also been looking but as no other solution was available
I had to create PDFAnim :-)

> Here are some comments:
> 
> 1. Even if I have found some problems in fullscreen, it is
>    already quite usable.
What do you mean with problems?

The ones I know are:
- Bad/slow rendering of animations (it's up to ADOBE to improve this :-)
- As soon as you click on an animation keys as page up/down or enter
   don't work anymore. This is because the clicked animation gets the
   focus and thus all pressed keys are send to it - also not evaluated
   in any way :-(
   To get keys working again click somewhere outside of the animation to
   give the focus back to AcroReader.

If there are additional problems please let me know.

> 2. In the step mode, I badly miss a "backward step"; Is there
>    any technical problem to implement it?  may be with the right
>    mouse button or with the back-space key (the space key already
>    does a forward step).
A PushButton is used for the animation. As far as I know
it only evaluates a mouse-click inside the button.
Pressing enter or space key while the button has the focus gives
just the same result. No other actions (like right mouse click or
back-space key) are evaluated. Please someone correct me if
I'm wrong 'cause I would like to implement this feature.

 From my point of view the only way to implement a backward step would
be a separate "backward step" button (not my preferred solution).

> 3. I find a bit uncomfortable the frame numbering format.  In
>    all my other animation scripts I use left padding zeros; e.g.:
>    file_001.pdf, file_002.pdf, ... file_099.pdf, file_100.pdf
I totally agree. I just did't find the time to implement this.
Will be in one of the next updates.

> 4. Would it be possible to allow not only .pdf frame files but
>    also .jpg or .png ??  For certain image types these formats
>    lead to files smaller than the .pdf ones and with better
>    visual appearance..
I'm not shure. At least not without a considerably amount of work.
An included .pdf already contains all necessary information to be used
as icon for a PushButton. These info seems to be missing when trying
to use .jpg or .png.
At least I couldn't get these formats working: They
can be imported the same way as .pdf but not be used as
icons for a PushButton.

As there are many programs out there to convert .jpg or .png
to .pdf and thus creating the missing info (more or less not even
changing the filesize 'cause .jpg and .png are file formats supported
by PDF) I don't think it is worth to spend much more time on this.


Ciao

   Jochen