I've created an initial version of a PDF import plugin for GIMP that uses poppler. Currently this version has little to offer compared to the existing ghostscript-based PDF import plugin, but I feel like a poppler-based plug-in has much more potential in the long run.

While this version uses poppler to render whole pages, it would be nice if it were possible to access individual elements, such as boxes of text or images, and have each rendered into a separate GIMP layer. Currently, there isn't enough exposed to the glib bindings to make this possible.

This initial version is downloadable at http://rockwalrus.dyndns.org/~rockwlrs/gimp-poppler , and should be buildable with the appropriate libgimp devel package. I would very much appreciate it if some poppler developers took a look at what is there already and let their imaginations run wild. :)

Rockwalrus

On 6/19/05, Leonard Rosenthol wrote:

At 06:23 AM 6/19/2005, Nathan Summers wrote:

I've created an initial version of a PDF import plugin for GIMP that uses poppler.

Cool!

Currently this version has little to offer compared to the existing ghostscript-based PDF import plugin,

Should be noticeably faster (and depending on the version of GS installed), higher quality.

I was refering mostly to the fact that there are several features that the GS version has that the poppler version, being a prototype, does not. For instance, the version I put on the web has the resolution hard-coded at 72 dpi, which isn't very reasonable.

While this version uses poppler to render whole pages, it would be nice if it were possible to access individual elements, such as boxes of text or images, and have each rendered into a separate GIMP layer.

Interesting, but what purpose would it serve? If GIMP had "real" text layers (ala PSD), then it might be interesting to create such from PDF - but otherwise, I don't see any use.

I'm not sure what you mean by "real" text layers. GIMP certainly can't do text layout as well as a typesetting program yet, but you certainly could click on a text layer, edit what the text says, and have the gimp engine re-render the text.

What did you have in mind?

It would be nice for different parts to be rendered into separate layers so they can be manipulated individually. GIMP already has some vector graphics features, and it is growing more constantly. Being able to inport paths actually as paths, etc, would be a very useful thing to have. Furthermore, if you only need a specific part of a large file, the ability to just import a few elements instead of the whole thing makes the workflow much easier.

Rockwalrus