[tex-k] libpoppler support in TeX Live source tree

[Norbert Preining]

Hi Peter,

On Mi, 18 Mär 2009, Peter Breitenlohner wrote:
> (1) please postpone this whole discussion until after the migration to the
> new build system is done and has stabilized.

Ok, fine. I am anyway infinitely grateful for your work on that!

> (2) To what extent is libpoppler a plugin replacement for the current
> libxpdf?

plugin .. hmm .. some code has to be change as seens in my patch, but
that is mostly change of headers, and some GString -> GooString. Not
much code actually changed.

> (3) Did you want to say that when building TL one could use libpoppler
> (installed or maybe built as part of the tree) as an alternative to the
> current libxpdf, or to make a complete switch.

Yes, the idea is to default as before to xpdf code base, but allow
	configure ... --with-poppler
that switches to poppler (with --with-system-poppler or whatever)

> (4) In case you think of a complete switch, you have to give support to have
> libpoppler built on all systems currently supported by TL.

No, complete switch is not a good idea for now because some project
itself do not want to switch.

It concerns pdftex, luatex, xetex: And I have no idea whether JK and HTH
want to switch themselves to poppler.

Best wishes

Norbert

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Dr. Norbert Preining <preining at logic.at>        Vienna University of Technology
Debian Developer <preining at debian.org>                         Debian TeX Group
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