Re: [PATCH] nextstep: Emacs can be used to edit PDF files

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

Stefan Kangas [2021-11-20 04:55:17] wrote:

> Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:
>
>> Any chance we could change doc-view so it works without `gs` (nor
>> `mupdf`) using one of the tools pre-installed in macOS?
>
> It seems like we could, from searching the web there's apparently a tool
> called "sips" that is pre-installed on macOS.  I just checked my machine
> and I have it there.
>
> AFAICT, you can't convert only one page with it, only the full page.
> But it seems to be a hard requirement of a
> `doc-view-pdf->png-converter-function' that we can specify a page number
> to it, so I'm not sure how tricky it is to fit into what we have now.
>
> Maybe someone more familiar with doc-view could take a look.

Apparently it might also be possible to do it via AppleScript
(according to http://preserve.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.21/21.03/BasicImageManipulation/index.html)

But both of those seem to focus on image manipulation and completely
skip describing the case of a PDF (or GIF, ...) that contains several
images/pages.
So yes, it might be doable but someone will have to play with
it to see exactly what can be done.

If it can only convert a whole document at a time, I think doc-view
could be adapted to accommodate that requirement.


        Stefan