[TFUI] Re: [agile-testing] Testing PDFs

Arrowood, Paul (ELS-STL) wrote:

> Has anyone had any experience testing 'generating to PDFs'?

Not directly, but I have done similar things.

Here are some guidelines:

 - use the "Gold Master Test" technique for a cheap way
   to detect changes in a reference copy of the PDF. The
   change might be a legitimate improvement, or it might
   be a bug anywhere in the pipeline. Run such tests very
   often, and be careful of your refactors. A legitimate
   refactor will never change incidental things, so these
   tests can test things a user would not notice

 - ultimately, testing a data format is about parsing that
   format and detecting signals. So use PDF2PS or
   similar to crack the format and create a format you
   can trivially parse. Use TDD to write such a parser,
   and only tune the parser until it can query out the
   signal you are looking for. Better, get or invent
   PDF2XML, and use XPath as a query

-- 
  Phlip
  http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ZeekLand  <-- NOT a blog!!


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