Re: [Groff] PDFPIC macro

[Keith Marshall]

On 18/09/14 14:42, Peter Schaffter wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 18, 2014, Keith Marshall wrote:
>>> On 17/09/14 22:22, Peter Schaffter wrote:
>>> Yes.  The way groff stands now, I'm uneasy relying on external tools
>>> and .sy for anything but local, user-written macros.  There's precedent,
>>> though, in www.tmac (PIMG), and this seems to be the best solution
>>> for PDF images.
>>
>> Do note, however, that this will compromise portability; e.g. pdfinfo is
>> unlikely to be supported on MS-Windows hosts.  Also, since .sy is an
>> intrinsically unsafe request, any macro which relies on it *must* be
>> invoked in unsafe mode, and users should rightly be wary of enabling
>> that, for untrusted sources.
> 
> Are there any tools that can be used in place of pdfinfo that are
> Windows safe?

None that I know of.  Even pstopdf isn't well supported ... because it's
a Bourne shell script, which Windows can't run natively.  It's better to
spawn GhostScript directly -- typically in the guise of gswin32c.exe --
with appropriate options to perform the conversion.

> Sorry, I haven't done Windows since...well...ever. :)

I no longer have any need of it myself, but my long association with
MinGW.org still leads me to consider portability issues.

> Would an addition to the warning emitted by the macro be sufficient
> to alert users to the potential dangers of -U?

Perhaps, but it's so much better if it can be avoided altogether.  FWIW,
in my former employment I produced a significant volume of PDF
documentation -- including the occasional PSPIC image -- using pdfroff
on MS-Windows, without ever needing to use -U.

-- 
Regards,
Keith.