[pdf-devel] Request for a new Text module method: pdf_text_get_printable ()

[Aleksander Morgado]

Hi all,

I filled a new Flyspray task with a new small task to implement a new
Text module API method:
http://www.gnupdf.org/flyspray/index.php?do=details&task_id=116

It's quite a small change, not dangerous and quite useful when playing
with pdf_text_t objects...

Comments welcome!

Details:
When programming with pdf_text_t objects, more than once it makes sense
to actually try to get a printable string of the contents in the
pdf_text_t; a string that can be passed to any printf-like method as
argument for the '%s' format string.

This method may be something like this:
const pdf_char_t *
pdf_text_get_printable (pdf_text_t text);

In GNU/Linux systems, it would return a constant non-modifiable and
NUL-terminated UTF-8 string. In Windows, this could be a NUL-terminated
UTF-16 string to be used in their printf-like methods for UTF-16
strings.

Hints:
* Initially, the printable string is not allocated.
* The first time this pdf_text_get_printable() method is called in a
given pdf_text_t, it will internally setup the proper string contents to
be returned.
* The following times this method is called, and IF the pdf_text_t
contents have not been modified, the same internal string is returned.
* Whenever the contents of the pdf_text_t are modified, the internal
buffer should be freed, so that any new call to pdf_text_get_printable()
will re-create the printable string again with the proper contents.

Once this is implemented, it will be possible to actually print the
pdf_text_t with any of our DEBUG macros, like:
PDF_DEBUG_BASE ("The text object contains: '%s'",
                pdf_text_get_printable (text_object));


-- 
Aleksander