stillhq.com : Mikal, a geek from Canberra living in Silicon Valley (no blather posts)

I have finally gotten around to making my AUUG 2001 presentation available online. The slides can be found here. The talk covers how to use Panda and PandaLex

Comment

LZW decompression in Panda

Tue, 12 Dec 2000 04:00:00 GMT

Several people have tried to convince me that decompression of LZW compressed information is not covered by the various Unisys patents on the LZW compression algorithm. This decompression would be useful for the reading in of existing PDF documents, as well as the inclusion of GIF images within a PDF document.

Having now done some research on the topic, it would appear that this is incorrect. An example is xpdf which is forced to convert the LZW compressed streams into something else before they can be used. My reading of the LZW license is also that this is the case.

Therefore, Panda will ont be supporting the inclusion of GIF images, or the the modification of PDF documents containing LZW compressed streams in the forseeable future. When the modification of such documents is supported, it will be implemented in a similar manner to that used in xpdf.

Comment

Libjpeg for Win32

Tue, 12 Dec 2000 04:00:00 GMT

People have also been telling me that they are having trouble compiling libjpeg for win32 platforms. Here it is...

The version is available:

libjpeg.lib (6b)

You'll also need the include files, which are:

jdct.h

transupp.h

There also also some handy tools, which are:

wrjpgcom.exe

The instructions for how to compile the library are as follows:

Uncompress the libjpeg distibution

Change into the jpeg-6b directory

Rename jconfig.vc to jconfig.h

nmake /f makefile.vc all

Done!

All of this is also available as one big .zip file, as well as a gzipped tarball (both of which WinZip can open).

Comment

Libtiff for Win32

Tue, 12 Dec 2000 04:00:00 GMT

People have been telling me that they are having trouble compiling libtiff for win32 platforms, so I have decided to include a copy here.

The versions available are:

libtiff.lib (3.5.4)

libtiff.dll (3.5.4) and the import library libtiff_i.lib

You'll also need the include files, which are:

t4.h

tiff.h

version.h

There also also some handy tools, which are:

tiffsplit.exe

The instructions for how to compile the library are as follows:

Uncompress the libtiff distibution

Change directory into the libtiff directory inside the distribution

Copy ..\contrib\winnt\fax3sm.c to fax3sm_winnt.c

Copy ..\contrib\winnt\libtiff.def to libtiff.def

Remove the line for TIFFModeCCITTFax3 from the libtiff.def file

Change the line for TIFFFlushdata1 in the libtiff.def file to TIFFFlushData1

nmake /f makefile.vc all

Done!

To compile the tools once you have the library, just change into the tools directory and do a nmake /f makefile.vc

All of this is also available as one big .zip file, as well as a gzipped tarball (both of which WinZip can open).

Comment

Comparison the PDF generation APIs

Mon, 11 Dec 2000 04:00:00 GMT

I have been doing some surfing and thought the following summary of the capability of the various PDF creation APIs might be useful to others. I see Panda having all of the functionality listed below as it becomes more mature over time. Where possible, I have indicated a timeframe in which implemenation might occur.

Feature	Panda Stable	Panda Future	Adobe	ClibPDF	PDFLib	UniSoft Imaging	vividX
Images: GIF	N	Never
Images: JPEG	Y
Images: PNG	N	0.4
Images: TIFF: Group 3 Fax 1D	Y
Images: TIFF: Group 3 Fax 2D	Y
Images: TIFF: Group 4 Fax	Y

Explainations:

GIF will never be supported by Panda because of the Patents associated with the LZW compression algorithm. The only exception to this would be if it was free to decompress LZW, and the data could then be written out as something else.

Comment

CLUG Talk

Wed, 22 Nov 2000 04:00:00 GMT

I gave a talk at the Canberra Linux User's Group (CLUG) meeting tonight. I have made the slides used for the talk available here. I have also editted the slides to include some idea of the commentary that I gave with the slides.

The slides cover topics such as what is Panda, what is PDF, directions for Panda development, and some simple sample code.

For reference, the original slides, as shown on the screen are also online...

Comment

AOSS Talk

Wed, 22 Nov 2000 04:00:00 GMT

I also gave a talk at the Australian Open Source Symposium in Adelaid today. The talk is very similar to that I gave a few days ago at CLUG (see below). However, some slides have been updated... I have made the slides used for the talk available here. I have also editted the slides to include some idea of the commentary that I gave with the slides like I did for the CLUG talk below.

The slides cover topics such as what is Panda, what is PDF, directions for Panda development, differnces in quality of PDF viewers and some simple sample code.

For reference, the original slides, as shown on the screen are also online...

Comment

Panda 0.2.2 man pages now on the web

Thu, 16 Nov 2000 04:00:00 GMT

The Panda 0.2.2 man pages are now available on the web in nicely formatted HTML. These might eb of interest to those programming on a machine without man installed (Windows perhaps), or those who are just interested in seeing what sort of documentation the library has.

The following pages are available:

panda-xobjectmodes (3)

setcharacterspacing (3)