Question about PDF manipulation

[Bjørn Vermo]

On Thu, 02 Jun 2005 04:18:29 +0200, Eric Smith <eric at brouhaha.com> wrote:

> Bjørn Vermo <bv at norbionics.com> wrote:

>> Please do not waste any time making new PDF documents,
>
> Please don't waste any time complaining about PDF documents.  In many
> cases, you're lucky to get the data in any form at all.
>

You do not get my point: Instead of adding an extra step to make PDF  
files, I think it is better to keep the raw scans. Preferably as PNGs, but  
if the scanner software does not provide that, TIFF is workable.

Thus, those who scan things (a task I really appreciate a lot) do not  
spend valuable time making the results less accessible, and it will be  
easy to OCR the images later on.

My point is that a pure bitmap is both easier to make and more useable  
than an Acrobat document, both for archival purposes and for further work.
The problem with TIFF is that it is bulky and not a single well-defined  
format, so it happens that software A will generate a TIFF that cannot be  
displayed by software B. PNG is a nice, open and flexible format which is  
designed to be the best cross-platform lossless image format.

-- 
Bjørn