pstoedit - Online in the Cloud

PROGRAM:

NAME

pstoedit - a tool converting PostScript and PDF files into various vector graphic formats

SYNOPSIS

FROM THE COMMAND SHELL
pstoedit [-v -help]

pstoedit [-include name of a PostScript file to be included] [-df font name]
[-nomaptoisolatin1] [-dis] [-pngimage filename] [-q] [-nq] [-nc] [-mergelines]
[-filledrecttostroke] [-mergetext] [-dt] [-adt] [-ndt] [-dgbm] [-correctdefinefont] [-pti]
[-pta] [-xscale number] [-yscale number] [-xshift number] [-yshift number] [-centered]
[-minlinewidth number] [-pagenumberformat page number format specification] [-split] [-v]
[-usebbfrominput] [-ssp] [-sfill] [-uchar character] [-nb] [-page page number] [-flat
flatness factor] [-sclip] [-ups] [-rgb] [-useagl] [-noclip] [-t2fontsast1] [-keep]
[-debugfonthandling] [-gstest] [-nfr] [-glyphs] [-useoldnormalization] [-rotate angle
(0-360)] [-fontmap name of font map file for pstoedit] [-pagesize page format] [-help]
[-gs path to the Ghostscript executable/DLL] [-bo] [-psarg argument string]
[-pslanguagelevel PostScript Language Level 1, 2, or 3 to be used.] -f "format[:options]"
[-gsregbase Ghostscript base registry path] [ inputfile [outputfile] ]

FROM GSVIEW
Pstoedit can be called from within gsview via "Edit | Convert to vector format"

FROM PROGRAMS THAT SUPPORT THE ALDUS GRAPHIC IMPORT FILTER INTERFACE
pstoedit can also be used as PostScript and PDF graphic import filter for several programs
including MS Office, PaintShop-Pro and PhotoLine. See http://www.pstoedit.net/importps/
for more details.

DESCRIPTION

RELEASE LEVEL
This manpage documents release 3.70 of pstoedit.

USE
pstoedit converts PostScript and PDF files to various vector graphic formats. The
resulting files can be edited or imported into various drawing packages. Type

pstoedit -help

to get a list of supported output formats. Pstoedit comes with a large set of format
drivers integrated in the binary. Additional drivers can be installed as plugins and are
available via http://www.pstoedit.net/plugins/. Just copy the plugins to the same
directory where the pstoedit binary is installed or - under Unix like systems only -
alternatively into the lib directory parallel to the bin directory where pstoedit is
installed.

However, unless you also get a license key for the plugins, the additional drivers will
slightly distort the resulting graphics. See the documentation provided with the plugins
for further details.

PRINCIPLE OF CONVERSION
pstoedit works by redefining some basic painting operators of PostScript, e.g. stroke or
show (bitmaps drawn by the image operator are not supported by all output formats.) After
redefining these operators, the PostScript or PDF file that needs to be converted is
processed by a PostScript interpreter, e.g., Ghostscript (gs(1)). You normally need to
have a PostScript interpreter installed in order to use this program. However, you can
perform some "back end only" processing of files following the conventions of the pstoedit
intermediate format by specifying the -bo option. See "Available formats and their
specific options" below.

The output that is written by the interpreter due to the redefinition of the drawing
operators is a sort of 'flat' PostScript file that contains only simple operations like
moveto, lineto, show, etc. You can look at this file using the -f debug option.

This output is read by end-processing functions of pstoedit and triggers the drawing
functions in the selected output format driver sometime called also "backend".

NOTES
If you want to process PDF files directly, your PostScript interpreter must provide this
feature, as does Ghostscript. Aladdin Ghostscript is recommended for processing PDF and
PostScript files.

OPTIONS

GENERAL OPTIONS
[-include name of a PostScript file to be included]
This option allows specifying an additional PostScript file that will be executed
just before the normal input is read. This is helpful for including specific page
settings or for disabling potentially unsafe PostScript operators, e.g., file,
renamefile, or deletefile.

[-xscale number]
.PP

[-yscale number]
.PP

[-xshift number]
.PP

[-yshift number]
.PP

[-centered]
.PP

[-minlinewidth number]
.PP

[-pagenumberformat page number format specification]
.PP

[-split]
Create a new file for each page of the input. For this the output filename must
contain a %d which is replaced with the current page number. This option is
automatically switched on for output formats that do not support multiple pages
within one file, e.g. fig or gnuplot.

[-usebbfrominput]
If specified, pstoedit uses the BoundingBox as is (hopefully) found in the input
file instead of one that is calculated by its own.

[-page page number]
Select a single page from a multi-page PostScript or PDF file.

[-rgb]
Since version 3.30 pstoedit uses the CMYK colors internally. The -rgb option turns
on the old behavior to use RGB values.

[-useagl]
.PP

[-noclip]
.PP

[-rotate angle (0-360)]
Rotate image by angle.

[-pagesize page format]
set page size for output medium. This option sets the page size for the output
medium. Currently this is just used by the libplot output format driver, but might
be used by other output format drivers in future. The page size is specified in
terms of the usual page size names, e.g. letter or a4.

[-help]
.PP

[-gs path to the Ghostscript executable/DLL]
.PP

[-bo]
You can run backend processing only (without the PostScript interpreter frontend)
by first running pstoedit -f dump infile dumpfile and then running pstoedit -f
format -bo dumpfile outfile.

[-psarg argument string]
The string given with this option is passed directly to Ghostscript when
Ghostscript is called to process the PostScript file for pstoedit. For example:
-psarg "-r300x300". This causes the resolution to be changed to 300x300 dpi. (With
older versions of Ghostscript, changing the resolution this way has an effect only
if the -dis option is given.) If you want to pass multiple options to Ghostscript
you can use multiple -psarg options -psarg opt1 -psarg opt2 -psarg opt2. See the
Ghostscript manual for other possible options.

[-pslanguagelevel PostScript Language Level 1, 2, or 3 to be used.]
.PP

-f "format[:options]"
target output format recognized by pstoedit. Since other format drivers can be
loaded dynamically, type pstoedit -help to get a full list of formats. See
"Available formats and their specific options" below for an explanation of the
[:options] to -f format. If the format option is not given, pstoedit tries to guess
the target format from the suffix of the output filename. However, in a lot of
cases, this is not a unique mapping and hence pstoedit demands the -f option.

[-gsregbase Ghostscript base registry path]
registry path to use as a base path when searching Ghostscript interpreter. This
option provides means to specify a registry key under HKLM/Software where to search
for GS interpreter key, version and GS_DLL / GS_LIB values. Example: "-gsregbase
MyCompany" means that HKLM/Software/MyCompany/GPL Ghostscript would be searched
instead of HKLM/Software/GPL Ghostscript.

TEXT AND FONT HANDLING RELATED OPTIONS
[-df font name]
Sometimes fonts embedded in a PostScript program do not have a fontname. For
example, this happens in PostScript files generated by dvips(1). In such a case
pstoedit uses a replacement font. The default for this is Courier. Another font can
be specified using the -df option. -df Helvetica causes all unnamed fonts to be
replaced by Helvetica.

[-nomaptoisolatin1]
Normally pstoedit maps all character codes to the ones defined by the ISO Latin1
encoding. If you specify -nomaptoisolatin1 then the encoding from the input
PostScript is passed unchanged to the output. This may result in strange text
output but on the other hand may be the only way to get some fonts converted
appropriately. Try what fits best to your concrete case.

[-pngimage filename]
.PP

[-dt]
draw text. Text is drawn as polygons. This might produce a large output file. This
option is automatically switched on if the selected output format does not support
text, e.g. gnuplot(1).

[-adt]
automatic draw text. This option turns on the -dt option selectively for fonts
that seem to be no normal text fonts, e.g. Symbol.

[-ndt]
never draw text. Fully disable the heuristics used by pstoedit to decide when to
"draw" text instead of showing it as text. This may produce incorrect results, but
in some cases it might nevertheless be useful. "Use at own risk".

[-dgbm]
.PP

[-correctdefinefont]
Some PostScript files, e.g. such as generated by ChemDraw, use the PostScript
definefont operator in a way that is incompatible with pstoedit's assumptions. The
new font is defined by copying an old font without changing the FontName of the new
font. When this option is applied, some "patches" are done after a definefont in
order to make it again compatible with pstoedit's assumptions. This option is not
enabled by default, since it may break other PostScript files. It is tested only
with ChemDraw generated files.

[-pti]
precision text. Normally a text string is drawn as it occurs in the input file.
However, in some situations, this might produce wrongly positioned characters. This
is due to limitations in most output formats of pstoedit. They cannot represent
text with arbitrary inter-letter spacing which is easily possible in PDF and
PostScript. With -pta, each character of a text string is placed separately. With
-pti, this is done only in cases when there is a non zero inter-letter spacing. The
downside of "precision text" is a bigger file size and hard to edit text.

[-pta]
see -pti

[-uchar character]
Sometimes pstoedit cannot map a character from the encoding used by the PostScript
file to the font encoding of the target format. In this case pstoedit replaces the
input character by a special character in order to show all the places that could
not be mapped correctly. The default for this is a "#". Using the -uchar option it
is possible to specify another character to be used instead. If you want to use a
space, use -uchar " ".

[-t2fontsast1]
Handle Type 2 fonts same as Type 1. Type 2 fonts sometimes occur as embedded fonts
within PDF files. In the default mode, text using such fonts is drawn as polygons
since pstoedit assumes that such a font is not available on the user's machine. If
this option is set, pstoedit assumes that the internal encoding follows the same as
for a standard font and generates normal text output. This assumption may not be
true in all cases. But it is nearly impossible for pstoedit to verify this
assumption - it would have to do a sort of OCR.

[-nfr]
In normal mode pstoedit replaces bitmap fonts with a font as defined by the -df
option. This is done, because most output formats cannot handle such fonts. This
behavior can be switched off using the -nfr option but then it strongly depends on
the application reading the generated file whether the file is usable and correctly
interpreted or not. Any problems are then out of control of pstoedit.

[-glyphs]
pass glyph names to the output format driver. So far no output format driver
really uses the glyph names, so this does not have any effect at the moment. It is
a preparation for future work.

[-useoldnormalization]
Just use this option in case the new heuristic introduced in 3.5 does not produce
correct results - however, this normalization of font encoding will always be a
best-effort approach since there is no real general solution to it with reasonable
effort

[-fontmap name of font map file for pstoedit]
The font map is a simple text file containing lines in the following format:

document_font_name target_font_name
Lines beginning with % are considerd comments.
For font names with spaces use the "font name with spaces" notation.

If a target_font_name starts with /, it is regarded as alias to a former entry.

Each font name found in the document is checked against this mapping and if there is a
corresponding entry, the new name is used for the output.

If the -fontmap option is not specified, pstoedit automatically looks for the file
drivername.fmp in the installation directory and uses that file as a default fontmap file
if available. The installation directory is:

* MS Windows: The same directory where the pstoedit executable is located

* Unix:
<The directory where the pstoedit executable is located> /../lib/

The mpost.fmp in the misc directory of the pstoedit distribution is a sample map file with
mappings from over 5000 PostScript font names to their TeX equivalents. This is useful
because MetaPost is frequently used with TeX/LaTeX and those programs do not use standard
font names. This file and the MetaPost output format driver are provided by Scott Pakin
(scott+ps2ed_AT_pakin.org). Another example is wemf.fmp to be used under Windows. See the
misc directory of the pstoedit source distribution. After loading the implicit (based on
driver name) or explicit (based on the -fontmap option) font map file, a system specific
map file is searched and loaded from the installation directory (unix.fmp or windows.fmp).
This file can be used to redirect certain fonts to system specific names using the
/AliasName notation described above.

DEBUG OPTIONS
[-dis]
Open a display during processing by Ghostscript. Some files only work correctly
this way.

[-q]
.PP

[-nq]
no exit from the PostScript interpreter. Normally Ghostscript exits after
processing the pstoedit input-file. For debugging it can be useful to avoid this.
If you do, you will have to type quit at the GS> prompt to exit from Ghostscript.

[-v]
Switch on verbose mode. Some additional information is shown during processing.

[-nb]
Since version 3.10 pstoedit uses the -dDELAYBIND option when calling Ghostscript.
Previously the -dNOBIND option was used instead but that sometimes caused problems
if a user's PostScript file overloaded standard PostScript operator with totally
new semantic, e.g. lt for lineto instead of the standard meaning of "less than".
Using -nb the old style can be activated again in case the -dDELAYBIND gives
different results as before. In such a case please also contact the author.

[-ups]
.PP

[-keep]
.PP

[-debugfonthandling]
.PP

[-gstest]
.PP

DRAWING RELATED OPTIONS
[-nc]
no curves. Normally pstoedit tries to keep curves from the input and transfers
them to the output if the output format supports curves. If the output format does
not support curves, then pstoedit replaces curves by a series of lines (see also
-flat option). However, in some cases the user might wish to have this behavior
also for output formats that originally support curves. This can be forced via the
-nc option.

[-mergelines]
Some output formats permit the representation of filled polygons with edges that
are in a different color than the fill color. Since PostScript does not support
this by the standard drawing primitives directly, drawing programs typically
generate two objects (the outline and the filled polygon) into the PostScript
output. pstoedit is able to recombine these, if they follow each other directly and
you specify -mergelines. However, this merging is not supported by all output
formats due to restrictions in the target format.

[-filledrecttostroke]
Rectangles filled with a solid color can be converted to a stroked line with a
width that corresponds to the width of the rectangle. This is of primary interest
for output formats which do not support filled polygons at all. But it is
restricted to rectangles only, i.e. it is not supported for general polygons

[-mergetext]
In order to produce nice looking text output, programs producing PostScript files
often split words into smaller pieces which are then placed individually on
adjacent positions. However, such split text is hard to edit later on and hence it
is sometime better to recombine these pieces again to form a word (or even sequence
of words). For this pstoedit implements some heuristics about what text pieces are
to be considered parts of a split word. This is based on the geometrical proximity
of the different parts and seems to work quite well so far. But there are certainly
cases where this simple heuristic fails. So please check the results carefully.

[-ssp]
simulate subpaths. Several output formats do not support PostScript paths
containing subpaths, i.e. paths with intermediate movetos. In the normal case, each
subpath is treated as an independent path for such output formats. This can lead to
bad looking results. The most common case where this happens is if you use the -dt
option and show some text with letters like e, o, or b, i.e. letters that have a
"hole". When the -ssp option is set, pstoedit tries to eliminate these problems.
However, this option is CPU time intensive!

[-sfill]
simulate filling by individual strokes.

[-flat flatness factor]
If the output format does not support curves in the way PostScript does or if the
-nc option is specified, all curves are approximated by lines. Using the -flat
option one can control this approximation. This parameter is directly converted to
a PostScript setflat command. Higher numbers, e.g. 10 give rougher, lower numbers,
e.g. 0.1, give finer approximations.

[-sclip]
simulate clipping. Most output formats of pstoedit do not have native support for
clipping. For that pstoedit offers an option to perform the clipping of the
graphics directly without passing the clippath to the output driver. However, this
results in curves being replaced by a lot of line segments and thus larger output
files. So use this option only if your output looks different from the input due to
clipping. In addition, this "simulated clipping" is not exactly the same as defined
in PostScript. There might be lines drawn at double size. Also clipping of text is
not supported unless you also use the -dt option.

INPUT AND OUTFILE FILE ARGUMENTS
[ inputfile [outputfile] ]

If neither an input nor an output file is given as argument, pstoedit works as filter
reading from standard input and writing to standard output. The special filename "-" can
also be used. It represents standard input if it is the first on the command line and
standard output if it is the second. So "pstoedit - output.xxx" reads from standard input
and writes to output.xxx

AVAILABLE FORMATS AND THEIR SPECIFIC OPTIONS

pstoedit allows passing individual options to an output format driver. This is done by
appending all options to the format specified after the -f option. The format specifier
and its options must be separated by a colon (:). If more than one option needs to be
passed to the output format driver, the whole argument to -f must be enclosed within
double-quote characters, thus:

-f "format[:option option ...]"

To see which options are supported by a specific format, type: pstoedit -f format:-help

The following description of the different formats supported by pstoedit is extracted from
the source code of the individual drivers.

psf - Flattened PostScript (no curves)
No driver specific options

ps - Simplified PostScript with curves
No driver specific options

debug - for test purposes
No driver specific options

dump - for test purposes (same as debug)
No driver specific options

gs - any device that Ghostscript provides - use gs:format, e.g. gs:pdfwrite
No driver specific options

ps2ai - Adobe Illustrator via ps2ai.ps of Ghostscript
No driver specific options

gmfa - ASCII GNU metafile
[-plotformat string]
plotutil format to generate

gmfb - binary GNU metafile
[-plotformat string]
plotutil format to generate

plot - GNU libplot output types, e.g. plot:-plotformat X
[-plotformat string]
plotutil format to generate

plot-cgm - cgm via GNU libplot
[-plotformat string]
plotutil format to generate

plot-ai - ai via GNU libplot
[-plotformat string]
plotutil format to generate

plot-svg - svg via GNU libplot
[-plotformat string]
plotutil format to generate

plot-ps - ps via GNU libplot
[-plotformat string]
plotutil format to generate

plot-fig - fig via GNU libplot
[-plotformat string]
plotutil format to generate

plot-pcl - pcl via GNU libplot
[-plotformat string]
plotutil format to generate

plot-hpgl - hpgl via GNU libplot
[-plotformat string]
plotutil format to generate

plot-tek - tek via GNU libplot
[-plotformat string]
plotutil format to generate

magick - MAGICK driver compatible with version 6.9.0 of ImageMagick.
This driver uses the C++ API of ImageMagick or GraphicsMagick to finally produce different
output formats. The output format is determined automatically by Image-/GraphicsMagick
based on the suffix of the output filename. So an output file test.png will force the
creation of an image in PNG format. This binary of pstoedit was compiled against version
6.9.0 of ImageMagick.

No driver specific options

swf - SWF driver:
[-cubic]
cubic ???

[-trace]
trace ???

xaml - eXtensible Application Markup Language
[-localdtd]
use local DTD

[-standalone]
create stand-alone type svg

[-withdtd]
write DTD

[-withgrouping]
write also ordinary save/restores as SVG group

[-nogroupedpath]
do not write a group around paths

[-noviewbox]
do not write a view box

[-texmode]
TeX mode

[-imagetofile]
write raster images to separate files instead of embedding them

[-notextrendering]
do not write textrendering attribute

[-border number]
additional border to draw around bare bounding box (in percent of width and
height)

[-title string]
text to use as title for the generated document

wemfnss - Wogl's version of EMF - no subpaths
[-df]
write info about font processing

[-dumpfontmap]
write info about font mapping

[-size:psbbox]
use the bounding box as calculated by the PostScript frontend as size

[-size:fullpage]
set the size to that of the full page

[-size:automatic]
let MS Windows calculate the bounding box (default)

[-keepimages]
debug option - keep the embedded bitmaps as external files

[-useoldpolydraw]
do not use MS Windows' PolyDraw but an emulation of it - sometimes needed for
certain programs reading the EMF files

[-OO]
generate OpenOffice compatible EMF file

hpgl - HPGL code
[-penplotter]
plotter is pen plotter (i.e. no support for specific line widths)

[-pencolorsfromfile]
read pen colors from file drvhpgl.pencolors in pstoedit's data directory

[-pencolors number]
maximum number of pen colors to be used by pstoedit (default 0) -

[-filltype string]
select fill type e.g. FT 1

[-hpgl2]
Use HPGL/2 instead of HPGL/1

[-rot90]
rotate hpgl by 90 degrees

[-rot180]
rotate hpgl by 180 degrees

[-rot270]
rotate hpgl by 270 degrees

pcl - PCL code
[-penplotter]
plotter is pen plotter (i.e. no support for specific line widths)

[-pencolorsfromfile]
read pen colors from file drvhpgl.pencolors in pstoedit's data directory

[-pencolors number]
maximum number of pen colors to be used by pstoedit (default 0) -

[-filltype string]
select fill type e.g. FT 1

[-hpgl2]
Use HPGL/2 instead of HPGL/1

[-rot90]
rotate hpgl by 90 degrees

[-rot180]
rotate hpgl by 180 degrees

[-rot270]
rotate hpgl by 270 degrees

pic - PIC format for troff et.al.
[-troff]
troff mode (default is groff)

[-landscape]
landscape output

[-portrait]
portrait output

[-keepfont]
print unrecognized literally

[-text]
try not to make pictures from running text

[-debug]
enable debug output

asy - Asymptote Format
No driver specific options

cairo - cairo driver
generates compilable c code for rendering with cairo

[-pango]
use pango for font rendering

[-funcname string]
sets the base name for the generated functions and variables. e.g. myfig

[-header string]
sets the output file name for the generated C header file. e.g. myfig.h

cfdg - Context Free Design Grammar
Context Free Design Grammar, usable by Context Free Art (http://www.contextfreeart.org/)

No driver specific options

dxf - CAD exchange format
[-polyaslines]
use LINE instead of POLYLINE in DXF

[-mm]
use mm coordinates instead of points in DXF (mm=pt/72*25.4)

[-ctl]
map colors to layers

[-splineaspolyline]
approximate splines with PolyLines (only for -f dxf_s)

[-splineasnurb]
experimental (only for -f dxf_s)

[-splineasbspline]
experimental (only for -f dxf_s)

[-splineassinglespline]
experimental (only for -f dxf_s)

[-splineasmultispline]
experimental (only for -f dxf_s)

[-splineasbezier]
use Bezier splines in DXF format (only for -f dxf_s)

[-splineprecision number]
number of samples to take from spline curve when doing approximation with
-splineaspolyline or -splineasmultispline - should be >= 2 (default 5)

[-dumplayernames]
dump all layer names found to standard output

[-layers string]
layers to be shown (comma separated list of layer names, no space)

[-layerfilter string]
layers to be hidden (comma separated list of layer names, no space)

dxf_s - CAD exchange format with splines
[-polyaslines]
use LINE instead of POLYLINE in DXF

[-mm]
use mm coordinates instead of points in DXF (mm=pt/72*25.4)

[-ctl]
map colors to layers

[-splineaspolyline]
approximate splines with PolyLines (only for -f dxf_s)

[-splineasnurb]
experimental (only for -f dxf_s)

[-splineasbspline]
experimental (only for -f dxf_s)

[-splineassinglespline]
experimental (only for -f dxf_s)

[-splineasmultispline]
experimental (only for -f dxf_s)

[-splineasbezier]
use Bezier splines in DXF format (only for -f dxf_s)

[-splineprecision number]
number of samples to take from spline curve when doing approximation with
-splineaspolyline or -splineasmultispline - should be >= 2 (default 5)

[-dumplayernames]
dump all layer names found to standard output

[-layers string]
layers to be shown (comma separated list of layer names, no space)

[-layerfilter string]
layers to be hidden (comma separated list of layer names, no space)

fig - .fig format for xfig
The xfig format driver supports special fontnames, which may be produced by using a
fontmap file. The following types of names are supported :
General notation:
"PostScript Font Name" ((LaTeX|PostScript|empty)(::special)::)XFigFontName

Examples:

Helvetica LaTeX::SansSerif
Courier LaTeX::special::Typewriter
GillSans "AvantGarde Demi"
Albertus PostScript::special::"New Century Schoolbook Italic"
Symbol ::special::Symbol (same as PostScript::special::Symbol)

See also the file examplefigmap.fmp in the misc directory of the pstoedit source
distribution for an example font map file for xfig. Please note that the fontname has to
be among those supported by xfig. See - http://www.xfig.org/userman/fig-format.html for a
list of legal font names

[-startdepth number]
set the initial depth (default 999)

[-metric]
switch to centimeter display (default inches)

[-usecorrectfontsize]
do not scale fonts for xfig. Use this if you also use this option with xfig

[-depth number]
set the page depth in inches (default 11)

xfig - .fig format for xfig
See fig format for more details.

[-startdepth number]
set the initial depth (default 999)

[-metric]
switch to centimeter display (default inches)

[-usecorrectfontsize]
do not scale fonts for xfig. Use this if you also use this option with xfig

[-depth number]
set the page depth in inches (default 11)

tfig - .fig format for xfig
Test only

[-startdepth number]
set the initial depth (default 999)

[-metric]
switch to centimeter display (default inches)

[-usecorrectfontsize]
do not scale fonts for xfig. Use this if you also use this option with xfig

[-depth number]
set the page depth in inches (default 11)

gcode - emc2 gcode format
See also: http://linuxcnc.org/

No driver specific options

gnuplot - gnuplot format
No driver specific options

gschem - gschem format
See also: http://www.geda.seul.org/tools/gschem/

No driver specific options

idraw - Interviews draw format (EPS)
No driver specific options

java1 - java 1 applet source code
[java class name string]
name of java class to generate

java2 - java 2 source code
[java class name string]
name of java class to generate

kil - .kil format for Kontour
No driver specific options

latex2e - LaTeX2e picture format
[-integers]
round all coordinates to the nearest integer

lwo - LightWave 3D object format
No driver specific options

mma - Mathematica graphics
[-eofillfills]
Filling is used for eofill (default is not to fill)

mpost - MetaPost format
No driver specific options

noixml - Nemetschek NOI XML format
Nemetschek Object Interface XML format

[-r string]
Allplan resource file

[-bsl number]
Bezier Split Level (default 3)

pcbi - engrave data - insulate/PCB format
See http://home.vr-web.de/~hans-juergen-jahn/software/devpcb.html for more details.

No driver specific options

pcb - pcb format
See also: http://pcb.sourceforge.net and http://www.penguin.cz/~utx/pstoedit-pcb/

[-grid missing arg name]
attempt to snap relevant output to grid (mils) and put failed objects to a
different layer

[-snapdist missing arg name]
grid snap distance ratio (0 < snapdist <= 0.5, default 0.1)

[-tshiftx missing arg name]
additional x shift measured in target units (mils)

[-tshifty missing arg name]
additional y shift measured in target units (mils)

[-grid missing arg name]
attempt to snap relevant output to grid (mils) and put failed objects to a
different layer

[-mm]
switch to metric units (mm)

[-stdnames]
use standard layer names instead of descriptive names

[-forcepoly]
force all objects to be interpreted as polygons

pcbfill - pcb format with fills
See also: http://pcb.sourceforge.net

No driver specific options

pdf - Adobe's Portable Document Format
No driver specific options

pptx - PresentationML (PowerPoint) format
This is the format used internally by Microsoft PowerPoint. LibreOffice can also
read/write PowerPoint files albeit with some lack of functionality.

[-colors string]
"original" to retain original colors (default), "theme" to convert randomly to
theme colors, or "theme-lum" also to vary luminance

[-fonts string]
use "windows" fonts (default), "native" fonts, or convert to the "theme" font

[-embed string]
embed fonts, specified as a comma-separated list of EOT-format font files

rib - RenderMan Interface Bytestream
No driver specific options

rpl - Real3D Programming Language format
No driver specific options

sample - sample driver: if you do not want to see this, uncomment the corresponding line in
makefile and make again
this is a long description for the sample driver

[-sampleoption integer]
just an example

sk - Sketch format
No driver specific options

svm - StarView/OpenOffice.org metafile
StarView/OpenOffice.org metafile, readable from OpenOffice.org 1.0/StarOffice 6.0 and
above.

[-m]
map to Arial

[-nf]
emulate narrow fonts

text - text in different forms
[-height number]
page height in terms of characters

[-width number]
page width in terms of characters

[-dump]
dump text pieces

tgif - Tgif .obj format
[-ta]
text as attribute

tk - tk and/or tk applet source code
[-R]
swap HW

[-I]
no impress

[-n string]
tagnames

vtk - VTK driver: if you do not want to see this, uncomment the corresponding line in makefile
and make again
this is a long description for the VTKe driver

[-VTKeoption integer]
just an example

wmf - MS Windows Metafile
[-m]
map to Arial

[-nf]
emulate narrow fonts

[-drawbb]
draw bounding box

[-p]
prune line ends

[-nfw]
Newer versions of MS Windows (2000, XP, Vista, 7, ...) will not accept WMF/EMF
files generated when this option is set and the input contains text. But if this
option is not set, then the WMF/EMF driver will estimate interletter spacing of
text using a very coarse heuristic. This may result in ugly looking output. On the
other hand, OpenOffice can still read EMF/WMF files where pstoedit delegates the
calculation of the inter letter spacing to the program reading the WMF/EMF file. So
if the generated WMF/EMF file shall never be processed under MS Windows, use this
option. If WMF/EMF files with high precision text need to be generated under *nix
the only option is to use the -pta option of pstoedit. However that causes every
text to be split into single characters which makes the text hard to edit
afterwards. Hence the -nfw option provides a sort of compromise between portability
and nice to edit but still nice looking text. Again - this option has no meaning
when pstoedit is executed under MS Windows anyway. In that case the output is
portable but nevertheless not split and still looks fine.

[-winbb]
let the MS Windows API calculate the Bounding Box (MS Windows only)

[-OO]
generate OpenOffice compatible EMF file

emf - Enhanced MS Windows Metafile
[-m]
map to Arial

[-nf]
emulate narrow fonts

[-drawbb]
draw bounding box

[-p]
prune line ends

[-nfw]
Newer versions of MS Windows (2000, XP, Vista, 7, ...) will not accept WMF/EMF
files generated when this option is set and the input contains text. But if this
option is not set, then the WMF/EMF driver will estimate interletter spacing of
text using a very coarse heuristic. This may result in ugly looking output. On the
other hand, OpenOffice can still read EMF/WMF files where pstoedit delegates the
calculation of the inter letter spacing to the program reading the WMF/EMF file. So
if the generated WMF/EMF file shall never be processed under MS Windows, use this
option. If WMF/EMF files with high precision text need to be generated under *nix
the only option is to use the -pta option of pstoedit. However that causes every
text to be split into single characters which makes the text hard to edit
afterwards. Hence the -nfw option provides a sort of compromise between portability
and nice to edit but still nice looking text. Again - this option has no meaning
when pstoedit is executed under MS Windows anyway. In that case the output is
portable but nevertheless not split and still looks fine.

[-winbb]
let the MS Windows API calculate the Bounding Box (MS Windows only)

[-OO]
generate OpenOffice compatible EMF file

NOTES

AUTOTRACE
pstoedit cooperates with autotrace. Autotrace can now produce a dump file for further
processing by pstoedit using the -bo (backend only) option. Autotrace is a program
written by a group around Martin Weber and can be found at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/autotrace/.

PS2AI
The ps2ai output format driver is not a native pstoedit output format driver. It does not
use the pstoedit PostScript flattener, instead it uses the PostScript program ps2ai.ps
which is installed in the Ghostscript distribution directory. It is included to provide
the same "look-and-feel" for the conversion to AI. The additional benefit is that this
conversion is now available also via the "convert-to-vector" menu of Gsview. However,
lot's of files do not convert nicely or at all using ps2ai.ps. So a native pstoedit driver
would be much better. Anyone out there to take this? The AI format is usable for example
by Mayura Draw (http://www.mayura.com). Also a driver to the Mayura native format would
be nice.

An alternative to the ps2ai based driver is available via the -f plot:ai format if the
libplot(ter) is installed.

You should use a version of Ghostscript greater than or equal to 6.00 for using the ps2ai
output format driver.

METAPOST
Note that, as far as Scott knows, MetaPost does not support PostScript's eofill. The
MetaPost output format driver just converts eofill to fill, and issues a warning if
verbose is set. Fortunately, very few PostScript programs rely on the even-odd fill rule,
even though many specify it.

For more on MetaPost see:

http://tug.org/metapost

CONTEXT FREE - CFDG
The driver for the CFDG format (drvcfdg) defines one shape per page of PostScript, but
only the first shape is actually rendered (unless the user edits the generated CFDG code,
of course). CFDG does not support multi-page output, so this probably is a reasonable
thing to do.

For more on Context Free see: http://www.contextfreeart.org/

LaTeX2E
* LaTeX2e's picture environment is not very powerful. As a result, many elementary
PostScript constructs are ignored -- fills, line thicknesses (besides "thick" and
"thin"), and dash patterns, to name a few. Furthermore, complex pictures may
overrun TeX's memory capacity. (The eepic package overcomes many such
restrictions.)

* Some PostScript constructs are not supported directly by "picture", but can be
handled by external packages. If a figure uses color, the top-level document will
need to do a "\usepackage{color}" or "\usepackage{xcolor}". And if a figure
contains rotated text, the top-level document will need to do a
"\usepackage{rotating}".

* All lengths, coordinates, and font sizes output by the output format driver are in
terms of \unitlength, so scaling a figure is simply a matter of doing a
"\setlength{\unitlength}{...}".

* The output format driver currently supports one output format driver specific
option, "integers", which rounds all lengths, coordinates, and font sizes to the
nearest integer. This makes hand-editing the picture a little nicer.

* Why is this output format driver useful? One answer is portability; any LaTeX2e
system can handle the picture environment, even if it cannot handle PostScript
graphics. (pdfLaTeX comes to mind here.) A second answer is that pictures can be
edited easily to contain any arbitrary LaTeX2e code. For instance, the text in a
figure can be modified to contain complex mathematics, non-Latin alphabets,
bibliographic citations, or -- the real reason Scott wrote the LaTeX2e output
format driver -- hyperlinks to the surrounding document (with help from the
hyperref package).

CREATING A NEW OUTPUT FORMAT DRIVER
To implement a new output format driver you can start from drvsampl.cpp and drvsampl.h.
See also comments in drvbase.h and drvfuncs.h for an explanation of methods that should be
implemented for a new output format driver.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

A default PostScript interpreter to be called by pstoedit is specified at compile time.
You can overwrite the default by setting the GS environment variable to the name of a
suitable PostScript interpreter.

You can check which name of a PostScript interpreter was compiled into pstoedit using:
pstoedit -help -v.

See the Ghostscript manual for descriptions of environment variables used by Ghostscript,
most importantly GS_FONTPATH and GS_LIB; other environment variables also affect output to
display, print, and additional filtering and processing. See the related documentation.

pstoedit allocates temporary files using the function tempnam(3). Thus the location for
temporary files might be controllable by other environment variables used by this
function. See the tempnam(3) manpage for descriptions of environment variables used. On
UNIX like system this is probably the TMPDIR variable, on DOS/WINDOWS either TMP or TEMP.

TROUBLE SHOOTING

If you have problems with pstoedit first try whether Ghostscript successfully displays
your file. If yes, then try pstoedit -f ps infile.ps testfile.ps and check whether
testfile.ps still displays correctly using Ghostscript. If this file does not look
correctly then there seems to be a problem with pstoedit's PostScript frontend. If this
file looks good but the output for a specific format is wrong, the problem is probably in
the output format driver for the specific format. In either case send bug fixes and
reports to the author.

A common problem with PostScript files is that the PostScript file redefines one of the
standard PostScript operators inconsistently. There is no effect of this if you just print
the file since the original PostScript "program" uses these new operators in the new
meaning and does not use the original ones anymore. However, when run under the control of
pstoedit, these operators are expected to work with the original semantics.

So far I've seen redefinitions for:

* lt - "less-then" to mean "draw a line to"

* string - "create a string object" to mean "draw a string"

* length - "get the length of e.g. a string" to a "float constant"

I've included work-arounds for the ones mentioned above, but some others could show up in
addition to those.

RESTRICTIONS

* Non-standard fonts (e.g. TeX bitmap fonts) are mapped to a default font which can
be changed using the -df option. pstoedit chooses the size of the replacement font
such that the width of the string in the original font is the same as with the
replacement font. This is done for each text fragment displayed. Special character
encoding support is limited in this case. If a character cannot be mapped into the
target format, pstoedit displays a '#' instead. See also the -uchar option.

* pstoedit supports bitmap graphics only for some output format drivers.

* Some output format drivers, e.g. the Gnuplot output format driver or the 3D output
format driver (rpl, lwo, rib) do not support text.

* For most output format drivers pstoedit does not support clipping (mainly due to
limitations in the target format). You can try to use the -sclip option to simulate
clipping. However, this does not work in all cases as expected.

* Special note about the Java output format drivers (java1 and java2). The java
output format drivers generate a java source file that needs other files in order
to be compiled and usable. These other files are Java classes (one applet and
support classes) that allow stepping through the individual pages of a converted
PostScript document. This applet can easily be activated from a html-document. See
the contrib/java/java1/readme_java1.txt or contrib/java/java2/readme_java2.htm
files for more details.

FAQS

1. Why do letters like O or B get strange if converted to tgif/xfig using the -dt
option?

Most output format drivers do not support composite paths with intermediate gaps
(moveto's) and second do not support very well the (eo)fill operators of PostScript
(winding rule). For such objects pstoedit breaks them into smaller objects whenever such a
gap is found. This results in the "hole" being filled with black color instead of being
transparent. Since version 3.11 you can try the -ssp option in combination with the xfig
output format driver.

2. Why does pstoedit produce ugly results from PostScript files generated by dvips?

This is because TeX documents usually use bitmap fonts. Such fonts cannot be used as
native font in other format. So pstoedit replaces the TeX font with another native font.
Of course, the replacement font will in most cases produce another look, especially if
mathematical symbols are used. Try to use PostScript fonts instead of the bitmap fonts
when generating a PostScript file from TeX or LaTeX.

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