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Re: [XaraXtreme-dev] EPS export

Gerry Iles wrote:

I don't agree that the EPS filters should be reimplemented as plugins
for precisely the reason you gave, Alex.  All the EPS based filters and
postscript printing use the same code to "render" our tree structure as
postscript and this code uses at least one technique that the plugin
filter system doesn't (outputting masked bitmaps for rasterised objects
that include non-alpha compatibly transparency).


OK. So I should fix up the other EPS filters. No problem.


For import it makes more sense to write a plugin filter though it would
probably be easiest to do this by writing a Xar format "output device"
for Ghostscript and then interfacing to that.  This would give us
(admittedly limited unless a lot of tricky object combination were
implemented) import filters for all the file types that Ghostscript
supports.  Would it also give people the ability to print to a Xar file
from other applications in the same way as the print to PDF option?


Well you have to do a bit more than that IIRC. Essentially you
need to write a printer driver (I think that can be implemented
as a GS back end). I don't know how you get it to appear in
the printer dialog. Hopefully just install it.


I would say that if we rely on external developers to implement all our
existing EPS based filters as plugins then they wont be ready by the
time 1.0 is released. 

You are probably correct.

A