[erlang-questions] Stuff that breaks when you move it

[Vlad Dumitrescu]

Hi Joe,

I see your point and can't really say I disagree, but I'm not sure if
I understand correctly what you're after.

First, the one-off case isn't the most common. Most of the time, one
wants to be able to share common resources.

For one-off documents, one can include all needed resources, one way
or another (most of the time). For example, you could include images
as json data that are rendered with javascript. Clunky, but possible.
Can be automated with a tool, so instead of zipping the separate
files, you pack them with another command.

Second, PDF files can still reference external resources, fonts and
even images (I think). So just by having a PDF file, you're not
certain that it is self-contained and you can view it as the author
intended.

Third, how do you draw the line between resources that are to be
embedded and those that aren't? Examples of the first category may be
images, fonts, properties files. The other category would include the
application to view the file, the C libraries it requires, a
compatible OS and a compatible hardware. The delimitation depends on
the specifics of your case and what works well for one-off projects
might be very wrong for a large distributed one.

Or did I misunderstand you?

best regards,
Vlad