Core Graphics, Part 1: In the Beginning

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28 pointsWoodenChair2 comments

> It’s commonly said that Quartz is “based on” PDF, and in a sense that’s true. PDF (Adobe’s Portable Document Format) is the PostScript drawing model without the arbitrary programmability. Quartz was designed that the typical use of the API would map very closely to what PDF supports, making the creation of PDFs nearly trivial on the platform.

Would making a PDF reader with the Core Graphics API also be nearly trivial then?

Yes. https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Gr....

I don’t think it is easier because of that mapping, though. The basic drawing operators are just a tiny part of creating a PDF reader; you also have to support various PDF features such as password protection, forms support, embedded JavaScript, etc, and you need a good library for building the GUI.

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