pstoedit(1) Conversion Tools pstoedit(1)
NAME
pstoedit - a tool converting PostScript and PDF files into various
vector graphic formats
SYNOPSIS
FROM A COMMAND SHELL
pstoedit [-v -help]
pstoedit The following options are available: [-include filename] [-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] [-vl ] [-usebbfrominput] [-ssp] [-sfill]
[-uchar character] [-nb] [-rdb] [-page page number] [-flat flatness
factor] [-sclip] [-ups] [-rgb] [-useagl] [-noclip] [-t2fontsast1]
[-keep] [-debugfonthandling] [-gstest] [-fakedateandversion] [-nfr]
[-glyphs] [-useoldnormalization] [-rotate angle (0-360)] [-fontmap name
of font map file for pstoedit] [-pagesize page format] [-help] [-bo]
[-psarg argument string] [-pslanguagelevel PostScript Language Level 1,
2, or 3 to be used.] -f "format[:options]" [-gs either full path to the
Ghostscript executable/DLL or - for Windows - just a version number
(e.g. 10.01.0), in which case the version is used to look up the path
from the registry.] [-gsregbase Ghostscript base registry path] [
inputfile [outputfile] ]
FROM PSTOEDITQTGUI
PstoeditQtGui provides an alternative to the command driven operation.
The GUI provides access to almost all options and features that are
supported by pstoedit. In addition it supports the conversion of
multiple files in one job and also provides some shortcuts to some of
Ghostscript's high level output devices.
The GUI is implemented using QT (https://www.qt.io).
The various options provided by pstoedit are displayed in different
tabs in the GUI according to their category. A link to a more detailed
description of each option into this manual is provided with each
option in the GUI.
Side note: None of the options are "hard coded" into the GUI. Instead
the meta information is retrieved from pstoedit itself. By this the
GUI is always up to date with respect to the options and formats
provided by pstoedit.
DESCRIPTION
RELEASE LEVEL
This man-page documents release 4.01 of pstoedit.
USE
pstoedit converts PostScript and PDF files into various vector graphics
formats. The resulting files can be edited or imported into various
drawing packages. Type
pstoedit -help
for a list of supported output formats. Pstoedit comes with a large set
of format drivers built into in the binary. Additional drivers can be
installed as plugins and are available from
http://www.pstoedit.net/plugins/. Simply copy the plugins into the
same directory where the pstoedit binary is installed or - on Unix like
systems only - alternatively into the lib directory in 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 that comes with the plugins for more details.
PRINCIPLE OF CONVERSION
pstoedit works by redefining some of PostScript's basic drawing
operators, such as 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 kind of 'flat' PostScript file containing
only simple operations such as moveto, lineto, show, etc. You can view
this file using the -f debug option.
This output is read by the end-processing functions of pstoedit and
triggers the drawing functions in the selected output format driver
sometimes called also "back-end".
NOTES ON GHOSTSCRIPT
Although pstoedit was designed to allow the use of any kind of
PostScript interpreter, it has only been tested in combination with
Ghostscript (https://ghostscript.com).
Up to version 9.55 of Ghostscript, it's PDF interpreter was implemented
in PostScript itself. That allowed pstoedit to handle PDF files in the
same way as PostScript files since the same mechanisms for intercepting
the drawing operations could be used.
However, from version 9.56 on, the PDF interpreter of Ghostscript was
implemented in C and hence the interceptions used by pstoedit are no
longer effective when processing PDF files.
You need to convert the PDF to PostScript at first before you can
convert it into another format. You can use Ghostscript for that or
also use the gs:ps2write (-f gs:ps2write) driver from pstoedit.
OPTIONS
GENERAL OPTIONS
The following options are available:
[-include filename]
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]
scale by a factor in x-direction
[-yscale number]
scale by a factor in y-direction
[-xshift number]
shift image in x-direction
[-yshift number]
shift image in y-direction
[-centered]
center image before scaling or shifting
[-minlinewidth number]
minimal line width. All lines thinner than this will be drawn in
this line width - especially zero-width lines
[-pagenumberformat page number format specification]
format specification for page numbers in filename if -split is
used. The specification is used to create the page number using
sprintf. The specification shall not include the leading % nor
the trailing d. Default is empty string which results in
formatting the page number using %d. This results in page
numbers like 1, 2, ..., 10. Sometimes you may want to have fixed
length with leading 0, so you might want to specify 02 which
means 2 digits with leading 0.
[-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]
use Adobe Glyph List instead of the ISO Latin-1 table (this is
experimental)
[-noclip]
do not use clipping (relevant only if output format supports
clipping at all)
[-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]
show the help information
[-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.]
PostScript Language Level 1, 2, or 3 to be used. You can switch
Ghostscript into PostScript Level 1 only mode by
-pslanguagelevel 1. This can be useful for example if the
PostScript file to be converted uses some Level 2 specific
custom color models that are not supported by pstoedit. However,
this requires that the PostScript program checks for the
PostScript level supported by the interpreter and "acts"
accordingly. The default language level is 3.
-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.
[-gs either full path to the Ghostscript executable/DLL or - for
Windows - just a version number (e.g. 10.01.0), in which case the
version is used to look up the path from the registry.]
tells pstoedit which Ghostscript executable/DLL to use -
overwrites the internal search heuristic
[-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
The following options are available:
[-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]
for debugging purpose mainly. Write result of processing also to
a PNG file
[-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]
experimental - draw also bitmaps generated by fonts/glyphs
[-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 considered 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 default installation directory. If it fails, then
<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.
DRAWING RELATED OPTIONS
The following options are available:
[-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.
DIAGNOSTIC AND DEBUG OPTIONS
The following options are available:
[-dis]
Open a display during processing by Ghostscript. Some files only
work correctly this way.
[-q]
quiet mode - do not write startup message
[-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.
[-vl ]
Switch on verbose mode with a given level. 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.
[-rdb]
Since version 3.10 pstoedit uses the -dDELAYBIND option when
calling Ghostscript. But in version 9.22 of Ghostscript, that
option is not supported anymore because of security reasons. As
a fallback, that version provides the REALLYDELAYBIND option and
pstoedit can use this if you supply the -rdb option. Use this
with caution as it might open security risks, e.g. a PostScript
file injecting some malicious code into PostScript standard
operators. However, not using this option can cause some of the
PostScript drawings operations to be not seen by pstoedit, hence
causing missing artefacts in the output. Later versions of
Ghostscript will probably support -dDELAYBIND again. But also in
that case the security risk remains. So be careful with what
files you process with pstoedit and Ghostscript.
[-ups]
write text as plain string instead of hex string in intermediate
format - normally useful for trouble shooting and debugging
only.
[-keep]
keep the intermediate files produced by pstoedit - for debug
purposes only
[-debugfonthandling]
writes verbose messages related to internal font processing -
for debug purposes only
[-gstest]
perform a basic test of the interworking with Ghostscript
[-fakedateandversion]
Just for regression testing - uses a constant date and version
string.
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.
FORMAT GROUP: PSF PS DEBUG DUMP PS2AI GS
This group consists of the following variants:
psf: Flattened PostScript (no curves).
ps: Simplified PostScript with curves.
debug: for test purposes.
dump: for test purposes (same as debug).
ps2ai: Adobe Illustrator via ps2ai.ps of Ghostscript.
gs: any device that Ghostscript provides - use gs:format, e.g.
gs:pdfwrite.
No format specific options
FORMAT GROUP: GMFA GMFB PLOT PLOT-CGM PLOT-AI PLOT-SVG PLOT-PS PLOT-FIG
PLOT-PCL PLOT-HPGL PLOT-TEK
This group consists of the following variants:
gmfa: ASCII GNU metafile.
gmfb: binary GNU metafile.
plot: GNU libplot output types, e.g. plot:-plotformat X.
plot-cgm:
cgm via GNU libplot.
plot-ai:
ai via GNU libplot.
plot-svg:
svg via GNU libplot.
plot-ps:
ps via GNU libplot.
plot-fig:
fig via GNU libplot.
plot-pcl:
pcl via GNU libplot.
plot-hpgl:
hpgl via GNU libplot.
plot-tek:
tek via GNU libplot.
The following driver specific options are available in this group:
[-plotformat string]
plotutil format to generate
MAGICK - MAGICK DRIVER COMPATIBLE WITH VERSION 7.0.7 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 7.0.7 of ImageMagick.
No format specific options
SWF - SWF DRIVER:
The following driver specific options are available:
[-cubic]
cubic ???
[-trace]
trace ???
FORMAT GROUP: SVG XAML
This group consists of the following variants:
svg: Scalable Vector Graphics.
xaml: eXtensible Application Markup Language.
The following driver specific options are available in this group:
[-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
FORMAT GROUP: CGMB1 CGMB CGMT
This group consists of the following variants:
cgmb1: CGM Binary format (V1).
cgmb: CGM Binary format (V3).
cgmt: CGM Textual format.
No format specific options
MIF - (FRAME)MAKER INTERMEDIATE FORMAT
The following driver specific options are available:
[-nopage]
do not add a separate Page entry
RTF - RICH TEXT FORMAT
No format specific options
FORMAT GROUP: WEMF WEMFC WEMFNSS
This group consists of the following variants:
wemf: Wogl's version of EMF.
wemfc: Wogl's version of EMF with experimental clip support.
wemfnss:
Wogl's version of EMF - no subpaths.
The following driver specific options are available in this group:
[-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
[-donotusepolydraw]
use lineto and moveto instead of polydraw when drawing a path
[-OO]
generate OpenOffice compatible EMF file
FORMAT GROUP: HPGL PCL
This group consists of the following variants:
hpgl: HPGL code.
pcl: PCL code.
The following driver specific options are available in this group:
[-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
PCB-RND - PCB-RND FORMAT
See also: http://repo.hu/projects/pcb-rnd and
http://www.penguin.cz/~utx/pstoedit-pcb/
The following driver specific options are available:
[-grid double number]
attempt to snap relevant output to grid (mils) and put failed
objects to a different layer
[-snapdist double number]
grid snap distance ratio (0 < snapdist <= 0.5, default 0.1)
[-tshiftx double number]
additional x shift measured in target units (mils)
[-tshifty double number]
additional y shift measured in target units (mils)
[-mm]
switch to metric units (mm)
[-forcepoly]
force all objects to be interpreted as polygons
PIC - PIC FORMAT FOR TROFF ET.AL.
The following driver specific options are available:
[-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 format specific options
CAIRO - CAIRO DRIVER
generates compilable c code for rendering with cairo
The following driver specific options are available:
[-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 format specific options
FORMAT GROUP: DXF DXF_14 DXF_S
This group consists of the following variants:
dxf: CAD exchange format version 9 - only limited features. Consider
using dxf_14 instead..
dxf_14:
CAD exchange format version 14 supporting splines and linetypes.
dxf_s: CAD exchange format version 14 supporting splines and linetypes.
The following driver specific options are available in this group:
[-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
[-filltohatch]
generate hatch objects from fill operations (still experimental)
[-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)
FORMAT GROUP: FIG XFIG TFIG
This group consists of the following variants:
fig: .fig format for xfig.
xfig: .fig format for xfig.
tfig: .fig format for xfig - test only version.
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 - https://mcj.sourceforge.net/fig-format.html for a list of legal
font names
The following driver specific options are available in this group:
[-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 format specific options
GNUPLOT - GNUPLOT FORMAT
No format specific options
GSCHEM - GSCHEM FORMAT
See also: http://wiki.geda-project.org/geda:gaf
No format specific options
IDRAW - INTERVIEWS DRAW FORMAT (EPS)
No format specific options
JAVA1 - JAVA 1.PPLET SOURCE CODE
The following driver specific options are available:
[java_class_name string]
name of java class to generate
JAVA2 - JAVA 2 SOURCE CODE
The following driver specific options are available:
[java_class_name string]
name of java class to generate
KIL - .KIL FORMAT FOR KONTOUR
No format specific options
LATEX2E - LaTeX2E PICTURE FORMAT
The following driver specific options are available:
[-integers]
round all coordinates to the nearest integer
LWO - LIGHTWAVE 3D OBJECT FORMAT
No format specific options
MMA - MATHEMATICA GRAPHICS
The following driver specific options are available:
[-eofillfills]
Filling is used for eofill (default is not to fill)
MPOST - METAPOST FORMAT
No format specific options
NOIXML - NEMETSCHEK NOI XML FORMAT
Nemetschek Object Interface XML format
The following driver specific options are available:
[-r string]
Allplan resource file
[-bsl number]
Bezier Split Level (default 3)
PCBI - ENGRAVE DATA - INSULATE/PCB FORMAT
No format specific options
PCB - PCB FORMAT
See also: http://pcb.sourceforge.net and
http://www.penguin.cz/~utx/pstoedit-pcb/
The following driver specific options are available:
[-grid double number]
attempt to snap relevant output to grid (mils) and put failed
objects to a different layer
[-snapdist double number]
grid snap distance ratio (0 < snapdist <= 0.5, default 0.1)
[-tshiftx double number]
additional x shift measured in target units (mils)
[-tshifty double number]
additional y shift measured in target units (mils)
[-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 format specific options
PDF - ADOBE'S PORTABLE DOCUMENT FORMAT
No format 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.
The following driver specific options are available:
[-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 format specific options
RPL - REAL3D PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE FORMAT
No format 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
The following driver specific options are available:
[-sampleoption integer]
just an example
SK - SKETCH FORMAT
No format specific options
SVM - STARVIEW/OPENOFFICE.ORG METAFILE
StarView/OpenOffice.org metafile, readable from OpenOffice.org
1.0/StarOffice 6.0 and above.
The following driver specific options are available:
[-m]
map to Arial
[-nf]
emulate narrow fonts
TEXT - TEXT IN DIFFERENT FORMS
The following driver specific options are available:
[-height number]
page height in terms of characters
[-width number]
page width in terms of characters
[-dump]
dump text pieces
TGIF - TGIF .OBJ FORMAT
The following driver specific options are available:
[-ta]
text as attribute
TK - TK AND/OR TK.PPLET SOURCE CODE
The following driver specific options are available:
[-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
The following driver specific options are available:
[-VTKeoption integer]
just an example
FORMAT GROUP: WMF EMF
This group consists of the following variants:
wmf: MS Windows Metafile.
emf: Enhanced MS Windows Metafile.
The following driver specific options are available in this group:
[-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 ON SPECIFIC FORMATS AND DRIVERS
AUTOTRACE
pstoedit cooperates with autotrace. Autotrace can now produce a dump
file for further processing by pstoedit using the -bo (back-end only)
option. Autotrace is a program written by a group around Martin Weber
and can be found at https://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. 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)
man-page 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 front-end. 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.
AUTHOR
Wolfgang Glunz, wglunz35_AT_pstoedit.net,
https://de.linkedin.com/in/wolfgangglunz
CANONICAL ARCHIVE SITE
http://www.pstoedit.net/pstoedit/
At this site you also find more information about pstoedit and related
programs and hints how to subscribe to a mailing list in order to get
informed about new releases and bug-fixes.
If you like pstoedit - please express so also at Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/pstoedit.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
* Klaus Steinberger Klaus.Steinberger_AT_physik.uni-muenchen.de
wrote the initial version of this man-page.
* Lar Kaufman revised the increasingly complex command syntax
diagrams and updated the structure and content of this man-page
following release 2.5.
* David B. Rosen rosen_AT_unr.edu provided ideas and some
PostScript code from his ps2aplot program.
* Ian MacPhedran Ian_MacPhedran_AT_engr.USask.CA provided the XFIG
output format driver.
* Carsten Hammer chammer_AT_hermes.hrz.uni-bielefeld.de provided
the Gnuplot output format driver and the initial DXF output
format driver.
* Christoph Jaeschke provided the OS/2 metafile (MET) output
format driver. Thomas Hoffmann thoffman_AT_zappa.sax.de did
some further updates on the OS/2 part.
* Jens Weber rz47b7_AT_PostAG.DE provided the MS Windows metafile
(WMF) output format driver, and a graphical user interface
(GUI).
* G. Edward Johnson lorax_AT_nist.gov provided the CGM Draw
library used in the CGM output format driver.
* Gerhard Kircher kircher_AT_edvz.tuwien.ac.at provided some bug
fixes.
* Bill Cheng bill.cheng_AT_acm.org provided help with the TGIF
format and some changes to TGIF to make the output format driver
easier to implement.
* Reini Urban rurban_AT_sbox.tu-graz.ac.at provided input for the
extended DXF output format driver.
* Glenn M. Lewis glenn_AT_gmlewis.com provided RenderMan (RIB),
Real3D (RPL), and LightWave 3D (LWO) output format drivers.
* Piet van Oostrum piet_AT_cs.ruu.nl made several bug fixes.
* Lutz Vieweg lkv_AT_mania.robin.de provided several bug fixes and
suggestions for improvements.
* Derek B. Noonburg derekn_AT_vw.ece.cmu.edu and Rainer Dorsch
rd_AT_berlepsch.wohnheim.uni-ulm.de isolated and resolved a
Linux-specific core dump problem.
* Rob Warner rcw2_AT_ukc.ac.uk made pstoedit compile under RiscOS.
* Patrick Gosling jpmg_AT_eng.cam.ac.uk made some suggestions
regarding the usage of pstoedit in Ghostscript's SAFER mode.
* Scott Pakin scott+ps2ed_AT_pakin.org for the Idraw output format
driver and the autoconf support.
* Peter Katzmann p.katzmann_AT_thiesen.com for the HPGL output
format driver.
* Chris Cox ccox_AT_airmail.net contributed the Tcl/Tk output
format driver.
* Thorsten Behrens Thorsten_Behrens_AT_public.uni-hamburg.de and
Bjoern Petersen for reworking the WMF output format driver.
* Leszek Piotrowicz leszek_AT_sopot.rodan.pl implemented the image
support for the XFIG driver and a JAVA based GUI.
* Egil Kvaleberg egil_AT_kvaleberg.no contributed the pic output
format driver.
* Kai-Uwe Sattler kus_AT_iti.cs.uni-magdeburg.de implemented the
output format driver for Kontour.
* Scott Pakin, scott+ps2ed_AT_pakin.org provided the MetaPost and
LaTeX2e and MS PowerPoint output format driver.
* The MS PowerPoint driver uses the libzip library -
http://www.nih.at/libzip. Under MS Windows, this library is
linked into the provided binary statically. Thanks to the whole
libzip team.
* Burkhard Plaum plaum_AT_IPF.Uni-Stuttgart.de added support for
complex filled paths for the XFIG output format driver.
* Bernhard Herzog herzog_AT_online.de contributed the output
format driver for sketch ( http://www.skencil.org/ )
* Rolf Niepraschk (niepraschk_AT_ptb.de) converted the HTML man
page to LaTeX format. This allows generating the UNIX style and
the HTML manual from this base format.
* Several others sent smaller bug fixed and bug reports. Sorry if
I do not mention them all here.
* Gisbert W. Selke (gisbert_AT_tapirsoft.de) for the Java 2 output
format driver.
* Robert S. Maier (rsm_AT_math.arizona.edu) for many improvements
on the libplot output format driver and for libplot itself.
* The authors of pstotext (mcjones_AT_pa.dec.com and
birrell_AT_pa.dec.com) for giving me the permission to use their
simple PostScript code for performing rotation.
* Daniel Gehriger gehriger_AT_linkcad.com for his help concerning
the handling of Splines in the DXF format.
* Allen Barnett libemf_AT_lignumcomputing.com for his work on the
libEMF which allows creating WMF/EMF files under *nix systems.
* Dave dave_AT_opaque.net for providing the libming which is a
multiplatform library for generating SWF files.
* Masatake Yamoto for the introduction of autoconf, automake and
libtool into pstoedit
* Bob Friesenhahn for his help and the building of the Magick++
API to ImageMagick.
* But most important: Peter Deutsch ghost_AT_aladdin.com and
Russell Lang gsview_AT_ghostgum.com.au for their help and
answers regarding Ghostscript and gsview.
LEGAL NOTICES
Trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.
Some code incorporated in the pstoedit package is subject to copyright
or other intellectual property rights or restrictions including
attribution rights. See the notes in individual files.
pstoedit is controlled under the Free Software Foundation GNU Public
License (GPL). However, this does not apply to importps and the
additional plugins.
Ghostscript is a redistributable software package with copyright
restrictions controlled by Artifex https://artifex.com/.
pstoedit has no other relation to Ghostscript besides calling it in a
subprocess.
The authors, contributors, and distributors of pstoedit are not
responsible for its use for any purpose, or for the results generated
thereby.
Restrictions such as the foregoing may apply in other countries
according to international conventions and agreements.
Conversion Tools 28 March 2024 pstoedit(1)
pstoedit 4.01 - Generated Sun Apr 14 15:20:02 CDT 2024