BePDF

Copyright © 1997 Benoit Triquet
Copyright © 1998-2000 Hubert Figuiere
Copyright © 2000, 2001 Michael Pfeiffer

Version: 0.7.10 Alpha 3
Released: June 24, 2001

Description

This program allows you to view Portable Document Format (PDF) files in BeOS. Originally developed by Adobe, PDF files have become the de facto standard for electronic documents.

Program History

BePDF was orignially based on the Unix/X11 application xpdf 0.92. The original port to the BeOS platform was undertaken by Benoit Triquet and Hubert Figuiere and lead to version 0.6. The project has since been taken up by Michael Pfeiffer. The current version of BePDF handles documents up to version 1.3 including encrypted files.

Acknowledgements

  • Derek B. Noonburg for xpdf.
  • Hubert Figuiere for BePDF 0.6.
  • NAITOH Jun for the Japanese Font Support.
  • Andre Lapierre for Documentation.
  • Jonas Sundström for the Application and Folder Icons.
  • Adam Rosser for the Toolbar Button Bitmaps.
  • Kevin H. Patterson for the "Get BePDF for BeOS 5" Button (see below).
Localization

Requirements

BePDF requires liblayout 1.3.0.

BePDF supports since version 0.7.9a3 PDF files that use traditional or simplified Chinese fonts. The support for Japanese fonts has also been updated.
To render such documents correctly, a font with appropriate glyphes is required. Haru is such a font, that has most Japanese and Chinese glyphes, and is included with BeOS 5 Pro (but it is not installed by default and can be copied from the BeOS CDROM to /boot/home/fonts/ttfonts or /boot/beos/etc/fonts/ttfonts. BeOS will not recognize the font until it is rebooted or a rescan is made in the BeOS Fonts preferences).
BeOS 5 PE users can download this font from the ftp-server at Be Inc. here (7.51MB).

The fonts used for Japanese, traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese can be configured in the preferences window.

BePDF can use Ghostscript 6.50 or later to render pages, if it finds the file libgs.so in the library search path the renderer can be enabled in the preferences window.

If you have Ghostscript 7.00 or later installed the next step is not required!

To render encrypted PDF files with Ghostscript renderer the file pdf_sec.ps in your Ghostscript installation directory /boot/apps/Ghostscript/lib has to be replaced with this version.

Please read more about the current limitations of the Ghostscript renderer in the Updates section.

The Ghostscript renderer is still experimental, it should not crash but it does not display all PDF files which is a bug in Ghostscript. Ghostscript prints some informations to stdout which might be helpful. To see this informations BePDF has to be run from the Terminal.

Installation

ZapfDingbats
BePDF requires the installation of the ZapfDingbats fonts package (originally part of the Ghostscript collection).

Just open 'Install Font' from Tracker and follow the instructions there.

Replicant for BePDF
A Replicant can be added to the deskbar. This allows to open BePDF from the deskbar.
The shell scripts "Add BePDF to Deskbar" and "Remove BePDF from deskbar" located in the BePDF directory can be used to add/remove the BePDF replicant to/from deskbar.

Rendering Base 14 Fonts with FreeType 2
BePDF uses the fonts that are installed by default with BeOS to display characters for the so called base 14 fonts and for substituted fonts. Sometimes a better display quality can be achieved when BePDF uses the fonts that come with Ghostscript. BePDF will use these fonts if it finds the font files in "BePDF/fonts/external".

The easiest way to put the fonts into "BePDF/fonts/external" is to create a symbolic link from the "/boot/apps/Ghostscript/fonts" (or where Ghostscript is installed) into "BePDF/fonts" and to rename the folder "fonts" to "external".

Please note that it is not recommended to enable the FreeType 2 font renderer and to allow BePDF to use the Ghostscript fonts on a slow machine.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Certain keyboard shortcuts can make navigating documents easier.
  • Spacebar - scroll forward on a page.
  • Backspace - scroll backwards on a page.
  • Cursor Arrow Keys - scroll incrementally in the direction of the cursor key.
  • Page Up - skip to the previous page.
  • Page Down - skip to the next page.
  • Home - return to the beginning of the document.
  • End - advance to the end of the document.
  • ALT+ G - go to page.
  • ALT+ Cursor Left - return to the previously viewed page within the document in history.
  • ALT+ Cursor Right - go forward (history).
  • ALT+ "+" - zoom in.
  • ALT+ "-" - zoom out.
  • ALT+ "*" - zoom fit to page.
  • ALT+ "/" - zoom fit to page width.
  • ALT+ RETURN - switch between fullscreen and window mode.
Please replace ALT with Control when you have set the Control key as the shortcut key in the Menu preferences.

Mouse Control

  • Left Mouse Button click over link - opens default browser with URL.
  • Left Mouse Button over free space - position document.
  • Right Mouse Button or Left Mouse Button + Control key
    Selects a rectangular area and copies the contents to the clipboard (Both text and bitmaps are included). The text can be pasted into any appropriate application (i.e. text editor). Similarly, the bitmap can pasted into Gobe Productive Graphics or Image Processing.

    Drag and Drop works like in ShowImage: Left click on the selection and drag it to a Tracker window and drop it there, this creates a file with the text inside the selection. A right click initiated drag and drop allows to choose a format for the image to be saved. The number of image formats depends on the color depth selected in the preferences window.

  • Middle Mouse Button or Left Mouse Button + Shift key - Zoom to ractangular area.

Note: If you're a southpaw and have configured your mouse in a left-handed configuration then substitute 'Left' for 'Right' and 'Right' for 'Left' in the above instructions.

Printing

The PDF file can be printed by selecting 'Print...' from the 'File' menu.

Printing of embedded TrueType and Type 1 fonts requires a lot of memory when the corresponding Font Renderer is enabled and can crash BeOS! You can enable and disable a Font Renderer in the Print Settings window. BePDF tries to replace a font with a BeOS font, when a Font Renderer is disabled.

A page printed with 300 DPI which uses Truetype fonts requires approximately 10 MB.
A page printed with 300 DPI which uses Type 1 fonts requires approximately 1 MB.

See also Memory Usage Statistics.

Get BePDF Button for Web

<A href="http://www.bebits.com/app/1438">
<IMG src="BePDFButton.png" width="88" height="32" border="0" alt="Get BePDF">
</A>

Get BePDF

Final Notes

Lastly, for informations on pre-0.7 incarnations of BePDF read README.beos in the docs/BePDF-0.6 directory. For similar documentation on xpdf check the license/xpdf directory.

BePDF