embedding images using pdfmarks

Hello, I am trying to embed a jpeg image into a PDF produced by distilling a PS file. This image will be used for creating the appearance of a push-button [widget annotation]. My question is, how do I get the binary data of a jpeg image into the XObject's stream, using a pdfmark? The pdfmark standard [version 6, Page 17] mentions two methods for adding content to a stream: 1. [ {streamname} string /PUT pdfmark--- Can the binary contents of the image file be pushed through in a string? If yes, the content might imbalance the delimiting parenthesis of the string. Will escaping the parenthesis in the content with the backsslash '\' characters work? 2. [ {streamname} file /PUT pdfmark---This file is supposed to be a PS file object. Can somebody provide an example on using a PS file object in this context? ----------------------------------------------------------- Quoting the standard from the same page.... "The resultant PDF object associated with the stream named object is always compressed using a lossless method that can be specified in Acrobat Distiller's Adobe PDF Settings dialog." Can this encoding of the stream data be turned off [maybe by embedding some params for distiller, in the PS file]? ---------------------------------------------------------- I'll greatly appreciate any help that gets me going in the right direction. Thanks in advance... Amit

Amit wrote: > I am trying to embed a jpeg image into a PDF produced by distilling a > PS file. This image will be used for creating the appearance of a > push-button [widget annotation]. This is possible, but not for the faint of heart since it requires mashing JPEG, PostScript, pdfmark, and PDF techniques. > My question is, how do I get the binary data of a jpeg image into the > XObject's stream, using a pdfmark? The pdfmark standard [version 6, > Page 17] mentions two methods for adding content to a stream: You can get the binary contents of a disk file into a stream. However, as you note, Distiller will always apply Flate compression to the data which defeats the idea of directly using JPEG image data. I am not aware of any workaround for this behavior. You _can_ do this, however, if you refrain from JPEG compression and use raw image data instead. For the sake of completeness, here's an idiom which you can use to construct an image object from raw pixel data provided in a disk file: [/_objdef {myImage} /type /stream /OBJ pdfmark [ {myImage} << /Type /XObject /Subtype /Image /Width 745 /Height 493 /ColorSpace /DeviceRGB /BitsPerComponent 8 >> /PUT pdfmark [ {myImage} (nesrin.raw) (r) file /PUT pdfmark > I'll greatly appreciate any help that gets me going in the right > direction. Thanks in advance... As an alternative to fetching the image data from a disk file you could embed the JPEG data directly in the PostScript stream. My old jpeg2ps utility may come in handy here (available at http://www.pdflib.com/products/more/jpeg2ps.html). The basic trick is to place the image on the page and attach a name to it via pdfmark. You can then refer to the image data using this name, and construct the Form XObject which you need as button icon. You'll have to get rid of the initial image on the page, either by placing it outside the page, hiding it behind a rectangle or a similar method. The code below implements all this, assuming you wrapped the JPEG data with appropriate PostScript data (using jpeg2ps). There are many opportunities for enhancements, but you'll get the basic idea. Thomas ----------------------------------------------------------------- %!PS % attach a name to the next image [ /_objdef {myImage} /NI pdfmark save /showpage {} def 0.1 0.1 scale % now comes JPEG data, wrapped as EPS (created with jpeg2ps) %!PS-Adobe-3.0 EPSF-3.0 %%Creator: jpeg2ps V1.9 by Thomas Merz %%Title: nesrin.jpg %%CreationDate: Tue Sep 28 10:45:16 2004 %%BoundingBox: 20 20 592 399 %%DocumentData: Clean7Bit %%LanguageLevel: 2 %%EndComments %%BeginProlog %%EndProlog %%Page: 1 1 /languagelevel where {pop languagelevel 2 lt}{true} ifelse { (JPEG file 'nesrin.jpg' needs PostScript Level 2!\n) dup print flush /Helvetica findfont 20 scalefont setfont 100 100 moveto show showpage stop } if save /RawData currentfile /ASCII85Decode filter def /Data RawData << >> /DCTDecode filter def 20 20 translate 572.00 378.52 scale /DeviceRGB setcolorspace { << /ImageType 1 /Width 745 /Height 493 /ImageMatrix [ 745 0 0 -493 0 493 ] /DataSource Data /BitsPerComponent 8 /Decode [0 1 0 1 0 1] >> image Data closefile RawData flushfile showpage restore } exec s4IA0!"_al8O`[\!W`9l!([(is6UAP:hXchDf]T1E$-qh0E=(!8PK<Oz!-eJG!!! ....more JPEG image data... ]RVqe$GXrP`j@eEdFsS+PPZO8BRKL[QaRJ%C*Ls4I~> %%EOF restore % construct a Form XObject which refers to the image [/_objdef {myIcon} /type /stream /OBJ pdfmark [ {myIcon} <</Type /XObject /Subtype /Form /FormType 1 /Matrix [1 0 0 1 0 0] /Resources << /XObject <</I0 {myImage} >> >> /BBox [0 0 745 493] /Filter /FlateDecode >> /PUT pdfmark [ {myIcon} (q 745 0 0 493 0 0 cm /I0 Do Q) /PUT pdfmark % create the button [ /T (myButton) /Subtype /Widget /FT /Btn /Rect [ 100 400 500 700 ] /F 4 /Ff 65540 /MK << /IF<</SW/A /S/P>>/TP 1>> /AP << /N {myIcon} >> /ANN pdfmark showpage _______________________________________________________________ Thomas Merz tm@pdflib.com http://www.pdflib.com Personalize PDF: PDFlib Personalization Server and Block plugin _______PDFlib - a library for generating PDF on the fly________