August 2005 - ntg-pdftex - NTG Mailing Lists

pdftex and xpdf (and its security bugs): What about a libxpdf?
by frank＠kuesterei.ch 24 Jan '06

24 Jan '06

Dear pdftex developers, during the last months security support for software containing xpdf code was a nightmare - not only that there were many security issues discovered, moreover everybody used a different patch, it was unclear to what extent older versions were affected, and so forth. This was also a problem for us, the teTeX maintainer in Debian, which currently has three versions of pdftex with three different versions of the xpdf code. What would you think about creating a shared library, "libxpdf", and using that for pdftex, either linked dynamically (for Linux/Unix distributions) or statically (for TeX-live and friends)? There is already such a library, libpoppler, a fork of the xpdf code (http://poppler.freedesktop.org/) However, I do not know whether the xpdf author, Derek B. Noonburg, is generally unwilling to create a shared library, or whether people simply didn't ask him. Personally I would prefer to have as little a number of versions of the same code, and thus to get a shared library from xpdf proper. If you agree, I would be oblidged if one of you would contact Derek Noonburg (derekn(a)foolabs.com) and ask him. He seems to be a little unresponsive at times, and has not answered a similar question from the maintainer of the xpdf package in Debian for a couple of weeks now. Maybe we can convince him that this is a good idea if he is approached from different sides. Alternatively, if he is unwilling to make this change, do you think using libpoppler would be feasible? Many thanks in advance, Frank Küster -- Frank Küster Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich Debian Developer

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[ pdftex-Patches-416 ] new primitive pdflastlink
by noreply＠sarovar.org 06 Dec '05

06 Dec '05

Patches item #416, was opened at 2005-08-19 09:42 You can respond by visiting: http://sarovar.org/tracker/?func=detail&atid=495&aid=416&group_id=106 Category: Primitives Group: v1.30.0 Status: Open Resolution: None Priority: 5 Submitted By: Ralf Utermann (ralfu) Assigned to: Nobody (None) Summary: new primitive pdflastlink Initial Comment: This patch implements a new primitive \pdflastlink (analogous to \pdflastannot) which returns the object number of the last object created with \pdfstartlink. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can respond by visiting: http://sarovar.org/tracker/?func=detail&atid=495&aid=416&group_id=106

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pdftex-1.30.2 is broken
by Thanh Han The 31 Aug '05

31 Aug '05

Hi Martin, it seems that pdftex-1.30.2 is broken. When I run it on a rather complex document, it couldn't find some files in the current directory or in the standard texmf tree. This doesn't happen with 1.30.0. I am sorry that I cannot send the files to reproduce the bug. The error happens randomly and took me a few hours before I tried to run 1.30.0 against it. I know that it makes little sense to talk about the bug without the files needed to reproduce the bug. However I think it's good to have the problem reported, just for case someone runs into similar problems. For the moment I will make my patches againts 1.30.0. Thanh

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[ pdftex-Feature Requests-421 ] \pdf shell escape addition
by noreply＠sarovar.org 27 Aug '05

27 Aug '05

Feature Requests item #421, was opened at 2005-08-26 20:32 You can respond by visiting: http://sarovar.org/tracker/?func=detail&atid=496&aid=421&group_id=106 Category: None Group: None Status: Open >Resolution: Accepted Priority: 5 Submitted By: ivo welch (iaw4) >Assigned to: Taco Hoekwater (taco) Summary: \pdf shell escape addition Initial Comment: I would humbly request that in addition add to \write18 ('--shell-escape'), you add a new command, say \input18 (or \pdftexshellinput18), which like \write18 executes a system() command on its argument, but which then pushes the stdout output from this shell command into the stdin stream that TeX is processing. (no, writing to a file and then inputting it does not do the job.) I cannot contribute to the code base of TeX, which seems like black magic to me. But I can offer $300 for this facility. If someone was planning to spend the time to do this anyway, this may push him/her over the margin. However, it is important to me that this enters the standard feature set of pdftex, so that it will persist through future versions, so this would be part of the bargain here. regards, /ivo welch ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >Comment By: Taco Hoekwater (taco) Date: 2005-08-27 09:01 Message: Logged In: YES user_id=1608 I have an idea on how to do this, so I've assigned it to myself ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can respond by visiting: http://sarovar.org/tracker/?func=detail&atid=496&aid=421&group_id=106

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[ pdftex-Feature Requests-421 ] \pdf shell escape addition
by noreply＠sarovar.org 26 Aug '05

26 Aug '05

Feature Requests item #421, was opened at 2005-08-26 18:32 You can respond by visiting: http://sarovar.org/tracker/?func=detail&atid=496&aid=421&group_id=106 Category: None Group: None Status: Open Resolution: None Priority: 5 Submitted By: ivo welch (iaw4) Assigned to: Nobody (None) >Summary: \pdf shell escape addition Initial Comment: I would humbly request that in addition add to \write18 ('--shell-escape'), you add a new command, say \input18 (or \pdftexshellinput18), which like \write18 executes a system() command on its argument, but which then pushes the stdout output from this shell command into the stdin stream that TeX is processing. (no, writing to a file and then inputting it does not do the job.) I cannot contribute to the code base of TeX, which seems like black magic to me. But I can offer $300 for this facility. If someone was planning to spend the time to do this anyway, this may push him/her over the margin. However, it is important to me that this enters the standard feature set of pdftex, so that it will persist through future versions, so this would be part of the bargain here. regards, /ivo welch ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can respond by visiting: http://sarovar.org/tracker/?func=detail&atid=496&aid=421&group_id=106

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[ pdftex-Feature Requests-421 ] \pdf
by noreply＠sarovar.org 26 Aug '05

26 Aug '05

Feature Requests item #421, was opened at 2005-08-26 18:32 You can respond by visiting: http://sarovar.org/tracker/?func=detail&atid=496&aid=421&group_id=106 Category: None Group: None Status: Open Resolution: None Priority: 5 Submitted By: ivo welch (iaw4) Assigned to: Nobody (None) Summary: \pdf Initial Comment: I would humbly request that in addition add to \write18 ('--shell-escape'), you add a new command, say \input18 (or \pdftexshellinput18), which like \write18 executes a system() command on its argument, but which then pushes the stdout output from this shell command into the stdin stream that TeX is processing. (no, writing to a file and then inputting it does not do the job.) I cannot contribute to the code base of TeX, which seems like black magic to me. But I can offer $300 for this facility. If someone was planning to spend the time to do this anyway, this may push him/her over the margin. However, it is important to me that this enters the standard feature set of pdftex, so that it will persist through future versions, so this would be part of the bargain here. regards, /ivo welch ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can respond by visiting: http://sarovar.org/tracker/?func=detail&atid=496&aid=421&group_id=106

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Re: [pdftex] pdftex 1.30.2
by Thomas Esser 25 Aug '05

25 Aug '05

> The pdfTeX team is happy to announce the release of a new stable version: Hm... pdftex.ch seems to be unchanged (-rc1): $ tar xf /t/not_ctan/pdftex-1.30.2.tar.bz2 -C /build $ grep 1.30.2 /build/pdftex-1.30.2/src/texk/web2c/pdftexdir/pdftex.ch @d pdftex_version_string=='-1.30.2-rc1' {current \pdfTeX\ version} ^^^^ !!! $ md5sum /t/not_ctan/pdftex-1.30.2.tar.bz2 4b0480114a4e1fc38b555a5a1b697174 /t/not_ctan/pdftex-1.30.2.tar.bz2 $ ls -l /t/not_ctan/pdftex-1.30.2.tar.bz2 -rw-r--r-- 1 te users 3353139 2005-08-25 20:16 /t/not_ctan/pdftex-1.30.2.tar.bz2 Thomas

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pdftex 1.30.2-rc1
by Martin Schröder 23 Aug '05

23 Aug '05

http://sarovar.org/download.php/700/pdftex-1.30.2-rc1.tar.bz2 The only change is the latest patches from Olaf and Thomas in TexLive; I prefer a new release to silently updating the archives (and all links to them and ctan and ...). Olaf & Thomas, please have a look at the rc. :-} Best Martin -- http://www.tm.oneiros.de

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pdftex 1.30.1-rc1
by Martin Schröder 19 Aug '05

19 Aug '05

http://sarovar.org/download.php/694/pdftex-1.30.1-rc1.tar.bz2 The only changes are xpdf 3.01 and kpathsea/web2c updates from TL. Thomas, please check the xpdf update; especially because I updated xpdf/depend.mk Best Martin -- http://www.tm.oneiros.de

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[ pdftex-Patches-415 ] various extensions and fixes
by noreply＠sarovar.org 19 Aug '05

19 Aug '05

Patches item #415, was opened at 2005-08-19 07:09 You can respond by visiting: http://sarovar.org/tracker/?func=detail&atid=495&aid=415&group_id=106 Category: Primitives Group: v1.30.0 Status: Open Resolution: None Priority: 5 Submitted By: The Thanh Han (hanthethanh) Assigned to: Martin Schröder (oneiros) Summary: various extensions and fixes Initial Comment: This is a patch for various experimental extensions: - \pdfinsertht: return the height of an insert (requested by Hans); this has similar syntax to \pdftexrevision. - do not fail when \pdfobj is used with an invalid object number (requested by Hans) - snapping: support for grid typesetting -- see snap.txt for details - kern before space: allow changing interword glues in a flexible way and inserting a kern before certain characters -- see kern-before-interword-glue.txt for details The notes in snap.txt and kern-before-interword-glue.txt are from email correspondence with people interested in; hence these notes are somewhat informal, inaccurate or out-of-date. How to apply: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ cd /path/to/pdftex-1.30.0-srcdir/src/texk patch -p1 < /path/to/pdftex-20050818.patch cd web2c make pdfetex ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can respond by visiting: http://sarovar.org/tracker/?func=detail&atid=495&aid=415&group_id=106

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