thoward / parrano

Parrano is a .NET wrapper for PSlib

Parrano

Parrano is a .NET wrapper for the PSlib C API. PSlib is a popular C library for generating multi page PostScript documents. There are functions for drawing lines, arcs, rectangles, curves, etc. PSlib also provides very sophisticated functions for text output including hyphenation and kerning, as well as the ability to define custom fonts and encodings.

The PSlib version that this wrapper is based on is v0.4.0. Please check the PSlib home page to obtain the latest version.

Parrano also includes a simple PostScript parser.

A note about licensing: Although the Parrano wrapper code is offered under the MIT license (completely unrestricted), PSlib is licensed under the GPL and LGPL licenses. This may prevent use of PSlib within commercial applications without a commercial license. Please contact the PSlib project owners to inquire about commercial use.

However, once you have determined the validity of your PSlib license, you may use the Paranno wrapper code to access it from your commercial application with no licensing concerns.

Current Status

Parrano is not yet to a first release.

If you are interested in working on the code, feel free to get the latest version, make your changes, and send a patch in. If you want to do a lot of work on the project, drop a line to [e-mail], and I'll set you up with commit access to the repository. A quick note indicating what you want to work on would be helpful, so we don't step each other's toes.

Outstanding Issues

• Trying to decide how to handle the PS_new_2() API declaration. It has the ability to pass function pointers for all memory allocation for a particular psdoc, which seems like a marshaling nightmare, as well as a source of a lot of potential memory consistency problems. I've stubbed out the declaration and delegates for the function pointers, but I'm hesitant to actually give public access to this overload without a higher-level managed object that will interact against it.

To Do

• Write unit tests for all the core API calls in Parrano.Tests.
• Port all code in the PSlib examples library in Parrano.Examples project.
• Compile PSlib v0.4.1 with image support for Win32. Current development is being done using a downloaded binary of v0.4.0 without the gif/tiff/etc support. The only image type that works with this library is eps, png, and jpeg. Until I create a correct DLL, I won't be able to test the image functionality.
• Create managed OO layer on top of core API calls, to abstract the procedural nature of the library.
• Make sure all extern declarations constrained with .NET enums as parameters also have original compatibility API declaration publicly available, to allow for easier porting.
• Update enums to have proper Pascal casing, and instead of calling .ToString(), apply Description attributes, and call DescriptionAttribute.GetCustomAttribute to read the string description which will be passed to the API extern call. This will allow for better maintainability of code if the strings PSlib expects change.