[NTG-pdftex] [Dev-luatex] Looking at a PDF/DVI while it is being produced

[Martin Schröder]

2008/3/8, Taco Hoekwater <taco at elvenkind.com>:
> I doubt it would be possible to do, that even with changes to pdftex.
>  In any case you end up with either no embedded fonts at all, or a
>  rather massive PDF with each page having its own font subsets and
>  images.

pdfTeX would have to generate incremental PDF (3.4.5), and the changes
would be non-trivial (fonts, images, page tree, objects, ...), while
the benefits are probably of interest for only a small number of users
(as the normal user doesn't have such large documents).

>  > But if I could send a signal to my PDFTeX/LuaTeX process, and this would
>  > cause it (at least if it would not currently be in a \shipout) to flush
>  > the current buffers, create a copy of the current PDF/DVI file under a
>  > snapshot name, properly finish/close it (writing reference table/DVI
>  > trailers) and then resume regular work, this would be quite dandy.
>
>
> The idea is interesting, but I have absolutely no time to implement it.
>  I fear that getting the details right may take quite some time (forking
>  is easy, the tricky bit is duplicating the open files and file handles).

Yes, forking would be a way. But I would not implement it in pdfTeX
anymore. Definitely luaTeX.

Best
   Martin