[tex-live] PDF 1.5 by default in TL 2010

[Heiko Oberdiek]

On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 11:51:04PM +0000, Karl Berry wrote:

>     In the case of pdftex or pdflatex, write in the source
>     \pdfminorversion=5
>     \pdfcompresslevel=9
> 
> We're thinking of \pdfcompresslevel=2 for the default.  That seemed like
> the best space/time tradeoff in Elie's experiments, as I recall.

On one hand there is the wish to switch to PDF 1.5 to use
the more advanced compression feature \pdfobjcompresslevel,
then you want to reduce compression? For the final run I would
want to have \pdfcompresslevel=9. The previous runs can be done
using option -draftmode. That should be faster than any setting of
\pdfcompresslevel.

IMHO the alternatives are:

a) the current setting
   \pdfminorversion=4
   \pdfcompresslevel=9
   \pdfobjcompresslevel=0

b) the suggested new setting
   \pdfminorversion=5
   \pdfcompresslevel=9
   \pdfobjcompresslevel=2 (recommended setting from manual)

The whole issue would become less dramatical, if the format
generation would support a user configuration file, e.g.

%%% pdftexconfig.tex %%%
\pdfoutput=1
...
\pdfpkresolution=600
%
\openin0 pdftexconfig.cfg
\ifeof0 %
\else  
  \closein0 %
  \input pdftexconfig.cfg %   
\fi
\endinput
%%% pdftexconfig.tex %%%

And pdftexconfig.cfg belongs to the user if he wants other default
settings.

Yours sincerely
  Heiko <oberdiek at uni-freiburg.de>