====== History of the Project ======

===== Version 2.0 of October 2017 =====

**Name** The new name is //**PDFtalk**//. The first version was called //PDF4Smalltalk//. With the name comes a domain with a wiki dedicated to the library: [[https://wiki.pdftalk.de|wiki.pdftalk.de]].

**Typing** The heard of the “PDF engine” is the [[newtyping|typing system]] which allows the assignment of Smalltalk classes to raw PDF objects. The new version has a redesigned type system where PDF types are properly modeled independent from the Smalltalk class hierarchy. This allows to rename classes freely (i.e. adding prefixes) without affecting PDF types. Also, boxing of some simple objects like "null" and booleans is not necessary anymore. Instead the existing classes can be declared as PDF types. More on this in the [[releaseNotes|release notes]].

**[[PDFtalk4Gemstone|PDFtalk for Gemstone]]** The new release was triggered by a contract to port the library to Gemstone (thanks to HTS and Bob Nemec). A talk about this was held at ESUG 2017: "PDFtalk for Gemstone" (slides are [[https://www.slideshare.net/esug/pdftalk-for-gemstone|here]]).

**[[GemstoneFileout|Gemstone Fileout]]** A VisualWorks to Gemstone translation tool. This tool, with project specific code transformation declarations, creates a Gemstone filein. Used to create the Gemstone PDFtalkLibrary from the Values package and PDFtalk bundle.

Both new projects are open source with MIT licence.
===== Version 1.4.3 of May 2016 =====

Image conversions are faster for non-optimized cases. The fallback pixel-by-pixel conversion was changed: first convert the image to the screen representation and then to PDF (which is optimized).

There are also some bug fixes concerning fonts and images using multiple filters.

And for the UI: the [left arrow] in the PDFExplorer tree view now moves the selection to the parent when not opened. To me this is the expected behavior for tree views.
===== Version 1.4 of February 2016 =====

A comprehensive implementation for using Smalltalk images with PDFs was added to the PDF4Smalltalk library (see [[images]]). This overdue feature was realized thanks to the encouragement of [[http://smalltalk-bob.blogspot.de/|Bob Nemec]], author of Report4PDF, and the generous funding from his employer, the Canadian engineering company [[http://www.hts.com/|HTS]].

===== March 2015 =====

[[https://gitorious.org/|Gitorius]] is closing down. Therefore I decided to use my own webspace to host the PDF4Smalltalk documentation. 

In the last 3 years, nothing much happened except for the occasional bug fix. But recently, I am more active again. 

I am working on the ContentStream whith, hopefully, leads to higher level objects like texts or graphical elements instead of a stream of graphics operators.

Since the project is on my own server now, I hope that I will program and write a bit more...

===== May 2012 =====

This project was hosted at [[http://pdf4smalltalk.origo.ethz.ch/|Origo]] until the end of Mai 2012. The wiki was recreated on [[https://gitorious.org/pdf4smalltalk|Gitorius]]. Other contents was preserved as follows:
  * The **Blog** was recreated on this wiki at [[:blog]]. Until another place is found to host the blog, the old contents is preserved here for reference.
  * The static **Forum** contents has been reposted on the discussion list and can be seen in the [[http://www.freelists.org/archive/pdf4st|archive]].
  * The **issue tracker** was not used much... so I dropped it with the old contents.

===== August 2011 =====

Published the first version as open source.

===== February 2011 =====

Started to write documentation at Origo.

===== February 2009 =====

Started to implement the PDF specification as replacement for the PostScript output module for [[http://www.smallcharts.com|smallCharts]].