Framers Digest, Vol 15, Issue 13

[Marcus Carr]

Dov wrote:

> PDF is a "final form" document format. It does not have
> the context of the graphical objects it represents.
> At best, if you produce a "tagged" PDF, a "converter"
> can make some guesses as to the original document
> structure in terms of sentences, paragraphs, and tables,
> but not much more. The Acrobat save-as-RTF capability
> as well as the third party products out there try to
> make good guesses as the original formatting, but that
> is about the best they can do. Very little context of
> a FrameMaker or InDesign document remains in the
> resultant PDF file, so any attempt to go back to those
> formats is somewhat doomed. If we were to supply "converters"
> back to those formats, users expectations would be set
> to a level that we could not deliver to.

Well put. It's a bit like trying to deconstruct a song back into its 
constituent tracks. You might be able to get some approximation of it, 
but never anything like as good as the original.


-- 
Regards,

Marcus Carr                      email:  mcarr at allette.com.au
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Allette Systems (Australia)      www:    http://www.allette.com.au
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"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
        - Einstein