Not sure where else to ask this, so I figured I’d give good old stackoverflow a shot.
Let’s say, by chance, I would like to write a library or set of libraries that will create PDF’s and convert files to PDF, AND I could care less about how long it will take me to complete (3 months – 10 years.. whatever). I have absolutely no interest in paying for a toolkit… the point of this would be to learn how to manipulate and create files like PDF’s. There’s nothing business critical about the project, I just want to learn how to do it. Where do I start? I would imagine something like this would be written in C++, but I’m not sure… maybe high level languages would work as well. I’m not looking for someone to tell me exactly how to do it, but send me in the write direction, or at least point out the concepts I would need to concretely grasp before proceeding with such a project.
Any advice and help in directing me here is greatly appreciated : )
Well, you will need a very good understanding of the PDF file format. Adobe publishes the standard and you can start at their site. You can start with the base 1.7 standard and then read the cumulative supplements from there. It is a daunting task, but it can be done and you can pretty much use any language you want, because in the end you are just generating bytes that can be saved to a file.
If you want to convert from, let’s say, word documents, it will get a little trickier. Microsoft has published their file formats, which you would have to learn and then learn how to translate that into the corresponding PDF formatting. Also note that the .doc and .docx formats are completely separate file formats and would require separate engines to convert them.
With unlimited time, it is definitely doable, you would just need to ask yourself if it is worth it.