Subject: Re: RFP - Re: Emailing the news -- HTML & PDF From: sbingham@acropolis.com Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 11:43:20 -0400

To: R Ballard 
X-Mailer: AIR Mail 3.X (SPRY, Inc.)
Status: RO
X-Status: A

Dear Rex:
I had a mail crash yesterday, so must have missed the prelude to this message. 
I assume that this is a genuine RFI, not a thought exercise to expose the 
limits of PDF. In either case, however, these are very interesting questions. 

I'll provide as many answers as I can. If you wish, I could also refer this to 
people at Adobe, though I'm sure you could do likewise.

BTW, I saw some S&P PDF delivered via Profound yesterday; it was very 
impressive (both your PDF and the Profound implementation).

Good luck, my address and contact information are below, should you need them.


Can you tell me where I can get either:
        A.  Precise specification of PDF - comparable to the PostScript Book?
The Portable Document Format Reference Manual, published by Addison-Wesley 
(ISBN 0-201-6268-4). More information in the Adobe Acrobat SDK, available from 
Adobe.

        B.  PDF viewers for Mosaic on Ultrix (4.1-4.3), Linux, AND all
            versions of Windows (3.0 to 9? and NT) AND OS/2, for modest fees.
Acrobat is currently only on SunOS, though I gather four flavors of Unix will 
be supported in the 2.1 release, due out in June. Platforms will be:
DOS (1.0)
SunOS (1.0)
Windows 3.1
Windows 95
Windows NT
Macintosh (+fat binary)
OS/2 (development has been announced, release date unknown)
All Acrobat Readers are free.

        C.  Source Code in portable C or C++ with compiler flags for the 
various
            flavors of UNIX, and OS/2 (windows is optional) under GPL?
Source code for the Reader is not available, as far as I know. Adobe is in 
process of making libraries available to developers to permit integration with 
other applications -- e.g. Netscape.
AND:
        D.  A SGML -> PDF generator that can work on VMS, OSF, or Unix
            and produce 3000 pages (charts, tables, fonts...)/day.  This is
            urgent, 3 NTs chugging away is producing about 300/week.
I am currently looking into this very question, as I have had others express 
the same need. No answer yet.
        D.  A GPL implementation of Secure Sockets or an equivalent.
This would have to come from Netscape or Terisa, I think.

        E.  GPL source to RSA encryption (C, C++, Perl).
RSA has a toolkit, BSAFE 2.1, which has an object-based, portable C API (RSA: 
415-595-8782)

        F.  Licensing rates for all of the above in quantity 1, 10, 100,
            1000, 10,000 and 100,000 (in case we have to license all
            subscribers).
No fee for the Acrobat Readers, unless plug-ins are required, then fee for 
Exchange LE or perhaps a fee for creating a "privleged plug-in" (decisions not 
yet final on this issue, I gather)
        G.  An "acrobat accelerator" that lets me page through at 10
            pages/minute or faster.
Let the _user_ page through at 10 PPM? That doesn't seem like it should be a 
problem (6 seconds/page for rendering?) If pages are complex and do indeed take 
this long, you might be able to build something that would reder some parts of 
the page only on demand, thereby speeding up rendering. It is an interesting 
concept.

        H.  A "PDF to FAX" converter.
Users can print to the driver of their fax software. If you want to bulk 
convert from PDF to Group 7, you could use a product like Image Alchemy from 
Handmade Software (510-252-0101)

        I.  A "PDF to GIF/JPEG" converter.
Same as above.
        J.  A "PDF Validator" (Am I sending out garbage or is my link 
fuzzy)?
Acrobat validates files when it opens them. And Acrobat Distiller and 
PDFwriter, as a rule, do not produce faulty PDF. If you really wanted to check 
files, I'm sure you could build a low-tech plug-in which would do nothing but 
validate files before sending them out.

        K.  Support by an engineer familiar with the source code 24/7?
            (8-5 in SF, NY, London, Australia, NewZealand, Japan, and 
India).
Do you mean one engineer on an airplane all the time or 8 engineers ? For 
the most part, the system described here could be implemented reliably using 
Adobe's products, which are quite robust. You might not need as much 
engineering as you fear.

Hope this helps, if I can do any more please don't hesitate to contact me.

Best Regards,

Sanford Bingham
Vice President
Magnetic Press Inc.
588 Broadway, Suite 505
New York, NY 10012
212-219-2831
sbingham@acropolis.com


From rballard@cnj.digex.net Fri Mar 28 22:58:19 1995
Status: RO
X-Status: 
Path: news3.digex.net!news2.digex.net!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!uunet!olivea!charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu!csusac!csus.edu!news.ucdavis.edu!library.ucla.edu!nnrp.info.ucla.edu!usenet