Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 111305
embedded PDF picture import
Last modified: 2014-01-23 19:06:47 UTC
For professionnal printing, PDF is currently replacing EPS as the prefered picture format. EPS and PDF can deal with colour separation and colour space, which is really very important for import in softwares like indesign. Now, the current support of PDF import in openoffice doesn't keep the original PDF picture, but transforms it in an editable openoffice draw document. This is fine for some uses, but when one merely wants to insert a pdf picture in an openoffice document, the expected behaviour should be the same as for EMF, EPS, or WMF pictures. So it would be convenient for desktop publishing if Openoffice offered PDF as a picture format (in the insert picture from file menu), beside the current PDF import capabilities.
Confirmed with AOO410m1(Build:9750) - Rev. 1557669 2014-01-14_04:11:13 - Rev. 1557927 Debian
Do I get that right - you want any PDF being embeddable by choosing import/picture/from_file and choosing it. Does anyone know if PDF has anything easy readable to represent it graphically then as we do with pictures/SVG/Metafiles? This would be needed, I guess you want to have the PDF content exported/printed/... and all that in good quality, am I right?
You are right, I would like PDF format to be usable just like EMF. In all cases, you need a PDF interpreter to render the pdf. I think it's also the case for all vector formats. An 'easy readable' part is not systematically available in the any format (when it is, its purpose was to speed up screen rendering on machines from the '90s). Using it to print would defeat the whole idea of using a vector format in the first place. OpenOffice includes an interpreter for those formats (perhaps not EPS), as can be shown if you look at PDF output and enlarge them. Now, PDF interpretation is certainly already available in the current PDF import function of openoffice (one might use the java library PDFbox too). The main difference is that a) the pdf would produce a vector picture, not a textual document b) the said picture would keep the initial pdf as a source (I suppose it's done that way for EMF/WMF, whose original format is respected by OpenOffice). Best regards, Serge
Hi rosmord, OpenOffice does not really contain an interpreter for PDF, there exists an extension that uses some external tooling to import huge parts of the PDF, but this is far off from being identical to the original PDF. Thus, the quality of the PDF content - when it would be possible to include that interpreter - would be off (much?) less quality than printing a PDF using the normal tools. There is a reason that the owner of that format wants you to use these tools. For sure - what you intend - that the included color separation stuff will be still alive after AOOs PDF import - will not be the case. If PDF would be able to extract a "print metafile' of some kind still cotaining that stuff, it *might* be possible to map it to the desired place in the office document and feed it scaled and translated to a printer output of some kind. This would solve the printer case, but not any other export/visualization yet...