[Tutor] pdf syntax

[Alan Gauld]

>>   i want create n manipulate pdf files.
>>   can anybody tell me what is pdf syntax n how it works?

PDF syntax is, I believe, a subset of Postscript. Postscript is a
page description language so it defines a document something
like a programming language draws graphics. Lots of positioning
commands, draw lines,arcs etc.

I've never written code to generate raw PDF but I have done
Postscript and I can say that its very hard work! If you can find
a toolkit use it and if you can avoid it altogether and just run
your output through a translator like Acrobat then thats better
still!

> I'm looking into this myself.  From what I gather, Reportlab's PDF toolkit
> ("The ReportLab Open Source PDF library") looks like the only sensible way
> to go if you want to write PDF from Python.

I seem to recall a Python module in the Vaults of Parnassus(sp?) that
did PDF generation. But I might be wrong...

Alan G.