On 4 Aug, 20:34, "[Jongware]" <IdontWantS...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> 1. You don't "convert" something to PDF. Ever. Please repeat for yourself.
> PDF is printer output, just as the paper from your printer.

Bollocks.


To the OP, if you have a serious need to generate PDFs with serious
control of the exact output, then look at generating XSL:FO from youtr
XML with XSLT, then using Apache FOP to render the XSL:FO into PDFs.


Of course PDF is an output format, not just a printer format. By
definition: it _is_ a format, and is defined as one, independently of
any printers. (although this is an unhelpful distinction for using
it).

Now it does have an implicit canvas embedded inside it (i.e. the page
size), so it's not as "output independent" as XML or even Word can be.
That's "printer like" behaviour, but it still doesn;t make the stand-
alone definiton of its format vanish. It's also _independent_ of the
final choice of printer and the control language that printer uses.

It's a bit more complex than that of course.  You frequently (and
should!) have PDFs that have only a loose dependency on one paper
size, so that they can be rendered to either A4 or US Letter paper
sizes, depending on the local standards of the end user.

You can also control (if you're careful enough) how a "document" is
"rendered" to the internals of a PDF document. Do this carefully and
you produce something that's device and scaling independent (probably
efficiently small too). Do it badly and you spew out a crude bitmap
that's prone to jaggies.

Most PDFs are generated by a "printer driver" that sends its results
to a file instead of a printer. Try Foxit's, if you don't want
Adobe's. This doesn't mean that there's no PDF format, or that you
can't convert content to that format.