Re: PDF Framework for smalltalk systems

Hi,



I think I need to clarify the term Open Source here.

There is a common definition used by the OSF which is different for
Alejandro's use.

Alejandro doesn't want to be forced to redefine his understanding of the
term - even if it is used differently in common so here follows an
explanation & definition of

Open Source how we ( Alejandro & me ) interpret it:



If you buy the product ( in case we state that Source is accessible ) you
will get access to the source.

You have already agreed when you purchased the product to the licence - and
in most cases signed a non-Disclosure-Agreement.

You have agreed further (assuming that you are a legal person doing software
business) that you are committed to us:

Only you (& your employees can make changes to the software - and this
should be the exceptional case).

You are not allowed to publish the code or to transfer the code without our
written permission to anyone else.

That we give the Sources away is a sign of thrust to our customers - the
general case is that our customers request changes & we react discussing,
incorporating or rejecting & proposing better solutions to the benefit of
our customer.

So I would commit to a new term "Accessible Source" which is more similar to
Microsoft Shared-Source definition - but also more restrictive.



We are using professionals to enforce licenses to protect us and our
customers because if we cannot make a sustainable business from our work our
customers will not benefit from our work.



To the mentioned DNG - yes an early alpha is available to our premium
customers - expect announcement for the Dolphin-Community as soon as Andy
Bower & we feels it is the right time-point.



If you want to get access to DNG you need to enter the DNGPortal (not free)
which requires first that you sign an NDA.



With best regards,



Frank Lesser, Lesser-Software

"aleReimondo" <aleReimondo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:65e7bb4b-d9f5-4ce0-8023-9526cc32bec4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi Janko,

This sounds interesting. Few questions:
- are you planing the other way too, from object model to PDF?

I have not had requests to generate PDF from object model yet.
No plans to implement it in a near future.

- so your framework is commercial, any plans for open source?

It is open source but not free software.
The sources are included with the license and the
framework has zero cost runtime fee.

- what is the advantage of Smalltalk PDF
processing over external libraries?

I don´t know libraries that exposes the PDF contents in the
detail my framework does, all contents from characters to
lines are exposed and can be used at application level
to process contents (e.g. form matching and detection,
image extraction for printing of photographs, etc).

I can talk about Foxit library and in my experiences with
the library it has been hard to manage error situations
because error and defaults are assumed by the library
and there is no way to manage/catch this at smalltalk
level.
In PDF processing of documents from the web, most cases of failure
is related with documents not conforming the specification,
and defaults (values and management of failures by the reader)
must be manageable at application level if you want to avoid
missing data or handle situations at application level
(e.g. repair and diagnose).
If the implementation is in Smalltalk you have the power
to subclass and to refine any mechanism and it is exposed
in source code in my framework.

hope this helps, with bets regards,
Ale.


.

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