[pdftex] [tex-live] PDF 1.5 by default in TL 2010

Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard mpg at elzevir.fr
Wed Jan 13 11:49:04 CET 2010


Philip TAYLOR a écrit :
> There is certainly no reason to assume that a majority of potential
> TL users will still be using AA (or, more likely, AR) 5.0.5, but
> we have no idea what fraction are, nor what fraction are using
> non-Adobe software that cannot handle PDF 1.5 with the proposed
> compression.

We're precisely trying to get an idea through this public discussion. Atm,
nobody but you and Robin have stated they use old PDF software on a regular
basis. IIRC, Robin also stated he can easily access more recent software if needed.

And again, the point is not about TL users, but about people who will receive
PDF produced by TL users. If it was about TL users, we could just assume that if
they got a recent TL, they can also get a recent viewer, period.

> Thus unless there is clear and indisputable evidence
> that (say) 98,5% of TL users can handle compressed PDF 1.5 w/out
> any difficulty,

There will not be such evidence, and there will not be any such evidence in the
opposite direction either. We can only reasonably assume that X% of people can
read compressed pdf 1.5. And according to this discussion X seems to be quite large.

> I argue that we should continue to (a) supply TL
> documentation in PDF 1.4,

I see no point in doing so. If people can install TL2010, they also can install
a recent pdf viewer. If they really don't want to, we provide the documentation
as plain old html too.

(And if you were talking about the documentation in packages, they are not
generated nor modified in TL, so the choice is up to individual authors.)

> and (b) that TL should be installable &
> subsequently configurable to generate (at least) PDF 1.4, uncompressed
> PDF 1.5 and compressed PDF 1.5 at the user's choice.
> 
It will be possible (just as you can already configure TL09 to make compressed
PDF 1.5 the default). The question is, how hard should we try to make it easy.

Manuel.


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