[reportlab-users] [PATCH] Optional use of A85 encoding

[Yoann Roman]

>> This is a follow-up to the following thread:

>> http://two.pairlist.net/pipermail/reportlab-users/2009-May/008239.html

>>

>> Please find attached a patch that optionally disables the use of A85

>> encoding. By default, the option is set so that RL behaves exactly as

>> it does now. However, when the use of A85 encoding is disabled by

>> setting rl_config.useA85 to 0, streams aren't passed through that

>> encoding throughout the code. This resolves the issue I was having 

>> with PDFs not being "binary enough" to trigger Outlook's base64 

>> encoding, resulting in mangled PDFs by misbehaving MTAs.

>> 

>> [snip]

> 

> I've put this in pretty much as is. I think I switched out some 

> places where conditional expressions were used as they might be too 

> modern for some.


Will make a note to avoid those in the future.


> The image caching was really all about a long time ago when it was 

> useful to be able to create images in a85 format up front and then 

> deploy to machines which might not have PIL etc etc. Also not sure 

> about using the .bin extension (if that code ever gets used). 

> Probably we ought to abandon the idea of using caching.


Entirely up to you. I used a different extension just to avoid getting 
non-A85-encoded data pulled if someone was using image caching.


> It seems to run for me in both modes as well, but faster without a85.


I hadn't even benchmarked it, but that's a nice side benefit, 
especially since we run all of our PDFs through multiBuild.

Thanks for including this!

-- 
Yoann Roman