Re: [oiic-formation-discuss] (1)(f) and (1)(g) -- audience and working language

["Sam Johnston" <samj@samj.net>]

On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 3:11 PM, Dave Pawson <dave.pawson@gmail.com> wrote:

2008/6/12 Sam Johnston <samj@samj.net>:

> On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 2:44 PM, Dave Pawson <dave.pawson@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Take a word processor instance. Print it out using A4 setting. Measure
>> position of (some part of the content). Should be x,y mm +- z mm wrt top
>> left.
>>
>> That's a usable metric. Is that a fair definition of 'pixel perfect' for
>> this
>> profile?
>
> Presumably this could be automated somewhat reliably by 'printing' or saving
> to PDF or postscript and checking for the position of certain items...

Not without a clear understanding. Since ODF doesn't call for 'export to PDF'
then I'd initially say this is not acceptable.
If printed it isn't automatable?

I was merely looking for something suitable and usable today. You noted:

Rick Jelliffe suggested a conversion to, say, SVG or xsl-fo
or something that clearly was position oriented in an xml
form. Perhaps that's a way ahead for simple text.

This sounds like a more elegant approach, except that it is the application's ability to interpret and render a document (like a browser interprets and renders HTML/CSS) that is under the microscope and as such this 'new layer' would have to be built into the app, yes? Even without native PDF support you can pretty much always extract a PDF/PS printjob from the OS, which may indeed be more reliable (one less variable in the PDF engine itself).

Anyway this is getting a little OT... there appears to be a requirement that we examine the ('printed') output of these applications and whether that is by a new presentation layer, scraping the GUI, using the built in print functions or indeed actually printing is more implementation than policy (charter). *What* we expect, in terms of scaling, devices, tolerances etc. is more on topic.

Sam