On 18/09/14 14:42, Peter Schaffter wrote: > On Thu, Sep 18, 2014, Keith Marshall wrote: >>> On 17/09/14 22:22, Peter Schaffter wrote: >>> Yes. The way groff stands now, I'm uneasy relying on external tools >>> and .sy for anything but local, user-written macros. There's precedent, >>> though, in www.tmac (PIMG), and this seems to be the best solution >>> for PDF images. >> >> Do note, however, that this will compromise portability; e.g. pdfinfo is >> unlikely to be supported on MS-Windows hosts. Also, since .sy is an >> intrinsically unsafe request, any macro which relies on it *must* be >> invoked in unsafe mode, and users should rightly be wary of enabling >> that, for untrusted sources. > > Are there any tools that can be used in place of pdfinfo that are > Windows safe?
None that I know of. Even pstopdf isn't well supported ... because it's a Bourne shell script, which Windows can't run natively. It's better to spawn GhostScript directly -- typically in the guise of gswin32c.exe -- with appropriate options to perform the conversion. > Sorry, I haven't done Windows since...well...ever. :) I no longer have any need of it myself, but my long association with MinGW.org still leads me to consider portability issues. > Would an addition to the warning emitted by the macro be sufficient > to alert users to the potential dangers of -U? Perhaps, but it's so much better if it can be avoided altogether. FWIW, in my former employment I produced a significant volume of PDF documentation -- including the occasional PSPIC image -- using pdfroff on MS-Windows, without ever needing to use -U. -- Regards, Keith.
