The name of the pdfmark mark

[Albert Kinderman]

I am sorry I lost the thread, so I am starting it anew.

K.H. was suggesting @Mark, but thought it might be confusing.

Jeff suggested @DocInfo (this is from memory).

I suggested @PdfMark

Jeff responded that what was needed was something more general that 
would apply equally to other backends.

So let's consider another backend.  Macromedia now has a Flash 
"distiller" that produces Flash movies (swf) from Word documents (it is 
installed as a printer driver in Windows), just as a pdf distiller 
produces pdf files from ps.  Suppose someone wanted to create a Flash 
distiller that worked on ps output.  I would guess that the ps would 
need some flashmarks in it to direct the distiller.  The goal is to 
have neither the pdfmarks or the flashmarks appear on paper when the ps 
is printed, but to be "visible" as directives to the distiller.

Question:  would the pdf distiller choke on the flashmarks and the 
flash distiller choke on the pdfmarks?

If the answer is no, then Jeff is correct that we only need a generic 
name that would cover these two distillers and any others. Authors 
could create a unified ps document with all types of embedded marks 
that would produce different types of documents depending on the 
distiller that the ps was run through.

On the other hand, if a pdf distiller would choke on the flashmarks, 
then the unified document is impossible.  ps intended for a pdf 
distiller could only use pdfmarks while ps intended for a flash 
distiller could only use flashmarks.  In this case, using the symbol 
@PdfMark for pdfmarks intended for the pdf distiller would help keep 
the author from accidentally using the wrong type of mark.  Similarly, 
using @FlashMark or @SwfMark for marks destined only for a flash 
distiller would help the author know that those were the only legal 
marks to be used.

The other option is to use a form like

@DocInfo
        distiller { pdf }
        type { url }
   etc

so every mark would be identified by the intended distiller.  This 
still wouldn't prevent the flash distiller from choking on the pdfmark 
produced, but at least the author would have a way to easily identify 
the type of distiller that each mark was intended to direct.

I realize that my knowledge in this area is very limited.  I am only 
looking at this from the point of view of an author using lout to 
produce a ps document that has pdfmarks in it.

Al






Albert Kinderman                Systems and Operations Management
          California  State University Northridge