$Id: README,v 1.5 2004/06/01 00:14:16 fredo Exp $

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There seem to be a growing plethora of Perl modules for creating and
manipulating PDF files.

This module is 'The Next Generation' of Text::PDF::API which initially
provided a nice API around the Text::PDF::* modules created by Martin Hosken.


FEATURES

    .  Works with more than one PDF file open at once

    .  It presents a object-oriented API to the user

    .  Supports:
        the 14 base PDF Core Fonts,
        a subset of the base PDF CJK Fonts,
        a subset of the Microsoft Webfonts (not embedded),
        Adobe-Type1 Fonts in both ascii and binary format (.pfa/pfb),
        TrueType fonts (.ttf),
        OpenType Fonts with TrueType Outlines (.ttf),
        OpenType Fonts with Postscript Outlines (.otf)

    .  Supports:
        "Joint Photographics Experts Group" images (.jpeg),
        "Portable Network Graphics" images (.png),
        "Graphics Interchange Format" images (.gif),
        "Tagged Image File Format" images (.tiff),
        "Portable AnyMap" images (.pbm/pgm/ppm)

    .  Supports:
        "Electronic Article Numbering 13" barcodes (EAN13),
        "Code 3 of 9" barcodes (CODE39) with/without check-number,
        "Extended Code 3 of 9" barcodes (CODE39EXT) with/without check-number,
        "Code 2 of 5 Interleaved" barcodes (CODE25INT),
        "CODABAR" barcodes

    .  Supports rudemantary modification of existing pdfs
        and imports from existing pdfs


UN-FEATURES (which will one day be fixed)

    .  Documentation is currently rather sparse
    .  This is code in development which works
       for my apps, your milage may vary :)


REQUIREMENTS

This module set requires you to have installed the following other perl modules:

    Module      Required for
    ------------------------------------------------------
    Compress::Zlib   - Compression of PDF object streams
    Memoize          - part of perl 5.8+ now
    perl >= 5.8.0

NOTES

For Type1 font support to work correctly you have to have a postscript font file,
either binary (pfb) or ascii (pfa) format and an adobe font metrics file (afm).


Thanks.


CHANGES

* between 0.3r77 and 0.40_13:

    put entire source under CVS.

    corrected licencing statements in all modules.

    requires at least 5.8.0 (5.8.1 would be better).

    rewrote entire module structure.

    rewrote importpage to use xobject rather than a true
    page, which is more reliable but discards annotations
    and acroforms.


    additional supported fonts:

        SynFont, CJKFont

    all fonts now use perl's 'Encode' modules wherever possible
    for full unicode support


    fixed imageformats:

        TIFF, GD, PNM, PNG

    additional supported imageformat:

        GIF


    supported bar-codes:

        2 of 5 interleaved
        codabar
        UPC/Code128/EAN128
        3 of 9/Code39
        EAN13

    barcodes are now full xobjects rather than copied
    page descriptions, which makes them more manageable.


    additional supported colorspaces:

        Indexed/ACTFile (adobe color table)
        Indexed/Hue (experimental; subject to change)
        Indexed/WebColor (experimental; subject to change)

    generic colorspace support has been dropped in favour
    of the new module structs.

    business-color support is disabled until rewritten.


    xobjects are now derived from page-content, so all drawing
    and text methods are also available there.