[xep-support] Second attempt: PDF file property "Created" not being set

[Jim Melton]

Nikolai,

At 00:02 2003-04-04 +0400 Friday, Nikolai Grigoriev wrote:
>Hi Jim,
>
> > (This is a second attempt to get a response to my question, first sent out
> > on 19 March.  Replies appreciated!)
>
>(We missed that. I am sorry.)

No problem...you get tons of email and your response time is almost always 
extremely good.

> > However, the Created field seems to always be garbage, while the Modified
> > date seems to contain the date that the PDF was created.
>
>I could not reproduce the effect. In the code, we set only the /Created
>field; and Acrobat (both 4 and 5) has no problems to decipher it.
>If I remember correctly, you run some extra PDF optimizer after
>XEP - could it be that the optimizer sets /Modified to its own date,
>and mangles /Created?

In fact, I don't run any PDF optimizations after XEP.  What I sometimes do 
is renumber the pages, especially if I need to put a separately-generated 
cover page in front of the document and so forth.  But the symptom that I 
described occurs whether I do the page renumbering or not.

In particular, a document that I created about 10 days ago was created 
using XEP 3.2.2 Client, which generated PDF 1.4 output.  When I open that 
document and invoke File | Document | Summary, the Document Summary box 
includes these two lines:
    Created:   0Çxxx÷x 00:00:00
(where each "x" is really a hollow square box indicating that I don't have 
a font installed that has that character in it)
    Modified:  2003-03-25 20:21:43

>One possible reason may be that we use Unicode to encode all strings,
>including dates. (This is not strictly necessary, but didn't cause
>any problems so far). Could you please turn off Unicode support
>in annotations, e.g. by adding <?xep-pdf-unicode-annotations false?>
>before <fo:root>, and retry your tests?

Wow!  That solved the problem!  I re-generated the exact same document 
using the identical .fo file, except that I put the PI into it immediately 
before fo:root.  The result, when I open the document and invoke File | 
Document | Summary is a Document Summary box in which those two lines read:
    Created:  2003-04-03 05:18:33
    Modified: Not available

Now, the remaining problem is that the Created *time* is off by 12 
hours!  At the time I generated the document, the actual time (according to 
my computer!) was 17:18, not 05:18.  I suspect that you're using a 12-hour 
timeclock representation and not outputting AM or PM, but I would strongly 
prefer that you use a 24-hour timeclock representation.

>If it solves the problem, it will
>mean that we have to write dates in PDFEncoding in all cases - an easy fix
>to be done in the next maintenance release. But if the problem
>persists, I would like to have a look at a sample PDF file.

Looks like that was the solution, so I'll await a fix in the next 
maintenance release.  (No rush...minor problem, of course.)

Many thanks!
    Jim
========================================================================
Jim Melton --- Editor of ISO/IEC 9075-* (SQL)     Phone: +1.801.942.0144
Oracle Corporation            Oracle Email: mailto:jim.melton at oracle.com
1930 Viscounti Drive          Standards email: mailto:jim.melton at acm.org
Sandy, UT 84093-1063              Personal email: mailto:jim at melton.name
USA                                                Fax : +1.801.942.3345
========================================================================
=  Facts are facts.  However, any opinions expressed are the opinions  =
=  only of myself and may or may not reflect the opinions of anybody   =
=  else with whom I may or may not have discussed the issues at hand.  =
========================================================================

-------------------
(*) To unsubscribe, send a message with words 'unsubscribe xep-support'
in the body of the message to majordomo at renderx.com from the address
you are subscribed from.
(*) By using the Service, you expressly agree to these Terms of Service http://www.renderx.com/tos.html