[pdftex] Another request for an enhancement to pdf(La)TeX

[André Wobst]

Am 27.10.2010 um 16:07 schrieb Martin Schröder:

> 2010/10/26 Patrick Gundlach <patrick at gundla.ch>:
>> This is partly because the xref table is at the end of the PDF file. So you need the complete file, then write the xref table and the pdfinfo (?) dictionary. (This is how I remember the PDF spec - I could be wrong though.)
> 
> The xref table can be anywhere in the file, but a pointer to it must
> be at the EOF.


It is just common practice to write the xref table close to the end of the file as all object positions are known once the objects have been serialized to the file. Similarly the size of the stream (compressed or not) is know once the stream has been written to the file. But this is the only similarity. The feature request is about seeking back in the file and writing the stream size at some space left previously (as it is done presently) or fill the stream size in a separate object being referred by the streams /Length attribute (would allow to write the PDF without seeking back).

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