Re: [Gnumed-devel] GNUmed > pdflatex generating bloated PDFs

[Busser, Jim]

On 2011-11-23, at 10:58 PM, Eric MAEKER wrote:

> Woutch ! This means lost of data. You'd better look at supported PDF version 
> of pdf2ps.

Hi Eric,

I suppose it depends on which data are you talking about. AFAIK, a pdf can 
contain:

(1) the content intended to be *visually communicated on the page*

                e.g. dates, names, addresses, dates of birth, identifiers,
                        paragraphs, tables

                e.g. textual-compatible *plus* potentially images

(2) page description data that is needed to communicate the *layout and spatial 
/ typographical visual *qualities* of the data in (1) such as shading, 
watermarks etc which may be FULLY DELIVERABLE despite leaving out content that 
is (in fact) not needed to be in the PDF in the first place

(3) possible additional content such as metadata or other data, for example 
properties such as 'author' and perhaps other information that you may wish to 
pass along inside the PDF (for example FreeDiams to other EMR).

If you are telling me that pdf2ps will 'lose' the data in (3) then I would 
agree that (in situations where it is desired to preserve metadata inside a 
PDF) then I agree we would have a use case to apply the method that I outlined 
selectively.

Things to note:

- I was talking mainly about the situation where GNUmed is creating a PDF 
*without* any intention of hiding needed-to-preserve metadata inside it

- I was talking optionally about applying the method to optically scanned paper 
or incoming faxes in which there would be no metadata unless one is using a 
scanner or software that for example inserts a layer of OCR text to assist with 
the indexing of the content of the document

- there is more than one way to generate a PDF and so doing pdf2ps and then 
ps2pdf may not even be the best way

- I do not know whether even in the case that you point out, pdf2ps loses the 
information you desire to be deserved… do you know this or is it theoretic?

I already included the references that were easy to access about pdf generation 
and file sizes. If anybody has others, those would be appreciated.

-- Jim