[texhax] status of pdfsizeopt

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 2013-11-30 at 07:22:24 -0500, Bob Tennent wrote:

 >  >| What's the current status of pdfsizeopt (a PDF file size optimizer)? 
 > 
 > It seems the project has been moved to github:
 > 
 > https://github.com/pts/pdfsizeopt
 > 
 > >From the Issues section:
 > 
 >   I looked further into the issue and apparently, people from the
 >   Multivalent project didn't like the fact that you reimplemented
 >   some things in pdfsizeopt, right?
 > 
 > with the following response from the author:
 > 
 >   About Multivalent: this is in progress, I'll share information
 >   after it's over.

I would even be happy with a pdfsizeopt which doesn't rely on
Multivalent.  Sure, Péter's aim is to provide the smallest possible PDF
file.  I used pdfsizeopt for my job applications a few years ago.
It turned out that converting Type 1 to CFF reduced the size
significantly without any side-effects.  I also tried to use JBIG2
compression for scanned images but de-compressing JBIG2 images is
utterly slow with current PDF viewers.  Adobe Reader cached the
de-compressed images at least, xpdf based viewers de-compress the file
whenever one scrolls from one page to another.  Hence it's not always
desirable to make the file as small as possible.

After all, I'm convinced that pdfsizeopt is very useful even if not
all features are available.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha                                      Phone: +49-511-3373112
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