[xep-support] Support for embedding PDF attachments?

Michael(tm) Smith smith at xml-doc.org
Sat Oct 28 10:13:50 PDT 2006


I believe the PDF spec describes a mechanism of some sort for
embedding attachments within a PDF file, and for displaying a
specific attachment when the user clicks on a particular hyperlink
in the PDF file.

The attachments can be of any arbitrary MIME type; I think the PDF
reader is responsible for handing off the attachment to an
appropriate application when the user activates the hyperlink
associated with the attachment. If the attachment is PDF, then
it's just opened in the reader in a separate window.

I know of a Latex package that provide support for embedding
attachments in PDF files -

  http://www.tug.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/attachfile/attachfile.pdf

I'm wondering if RenderX might consider adding similar support in XEP.

Here's a use case:

For DocBook 5.0, an "annotation" element was added to DocBook. The
content model of the element is such that it can contain not just
text, but also markup -- including images, hyperlinks, tables, and
so on. And the processing expectation for it are that if its
contents are displayed at all, they are displayed "out of line" --
not in the main text flow.

For HTML output from the DocBook Project XSL stylesheets, Norm
Walsh added a mechanism that uses Javascript to display the
attachments as pop-ups -- not tooltip text, but Javascript pop-up
windows that contain images, hyperlinks, and so on.

For FO/PDF output, we have not yet implented support for handling
annotations. If XEP were to add support for an rx:annotation (or
whatever) element, the we could transform our annotation output
into that. XEP would then generate a PDF attachment for each
rx:annotation instance, and embed that attachment in the master
PDF file, along with a hyperlinked marker of some kind. When a
user clicks on one of those links, the PDF attachment for that
annotation is opened in separate window.

  --Mike

-- 
Michael(tm) Smith
xmpp:smith at sideshowbarker.net
irc://irc.freenode.net/mobile-web
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