PSTOEDIT(1) Conversion Tools PSTOEDIT(1)NAMEpstoedit - a tool converting PostScript and PDF files into various vec‐
tor 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 - for debugging
purpose mainly. Write result of processing also to a PNG file.] [-q]
[-nq] [-nc] [-nsp] [-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 specifica‐
tion] [-split] [-v] [-usebbfrominput] [-ssp] [-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 to
be used 1,2, or 3] -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 3.62 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 addi‐
tional drivers will slightly distort the resulting graphics. See the
documentation provided with the plugins for further details.
PRINCIPLE OF CONVERSION
pstoedit works by redefining the some basic painting operators of Post‐
Script, 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 pro‐
gram. However, you can perform some "back end only" processing of files
following the conventions of the pstoedit intermediate formate by spec‐
ifying 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 con‐
tains 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 trig‐
gers the drawing functions in the selected output format driver some‐
time 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 options allows to specify 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 file name if -split is
used. The specification is used to create the page number using
sprintf.The specification shall not include the leading
[-split]
Create a new file for each page of the input. For this the out‐
put filename must contain a %d which is replaced with the cur‐
rent page number. This option is automatically switched on for
output formats that don't 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 IsoLatin1 table (this is
experimental)
[-noclip]
don't use clipping (relevant only if output format supports
clipping at all)
[-rotate angle (0-360)]
Rotage 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
[-gs path to the ghostscript executable/DLL ]
tells pstoedit which ghostscript executable/DLL to use - over‐
writes the internal search heuristic
[-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 out‐
file.
[-psarg argument string]
The string given with this option is passed directly to Ghost‐
script 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 to be used 1,2, or 3]
PostScript Language Level to be used 1,2, or 3 You can switch
Ghostscript into PostScript Level 1 only mode by -pslan‐
guagelevel 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 for‐
mat 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, ver‐
sion 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 gener‐
ated by dvips(1). In such a case pstoedit uses a replacement
font. The default for this is Courier. Another font can be spec‐
ified 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.]
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. gnu‐
plot(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 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 define‐
font in order to make it again compatible with pstoedit's
assumptions. This option is not enabled per default, since it
may break other PostScript file. 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 pro‐
duce wrongly positioned characters. This is due to limitiations
in most output formats of pstoedit. They cannot represent text
with arbitray 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 "pre‐
cision 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 couldn't
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 users machine.
If this option is set, pstoedit assumes that the internal encod‐
ing 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 can't handle such fonts. This behavior can be switched
off using the -nfr option but then it strongly depends on the
application reading the 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 doesn't produce correct results - however, this normaliza‐
tion 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 fol‐
lowing format:
document_font_name target_font_name
Lines beginning with % are considerd comments
If a font name contains spaces, use the "font name with spaces" nota‐
tion.
If a target_font_name starts with /, it is regarded as alias to a for‐
mer 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:
* Windows: The same directory where the pstoedit executable
is located
* Unix:
<The directory where the pstoedit executably is located>
/../lib/
The mpost.fmp in the misc directory of the pstoedit distibution is a
sample map file with mappings from over 5000 PostScript font names to
their TeXequivalents. This is useful because MetaPost is frequently
used with TeX/LaTeX and those programs don't 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 dis‐
tribution. After loading the implicit (based on driver name) or
explicit (based on the -fontmap option) font map file, a system spe‐
cific 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]
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.
[-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 Post‐
Script 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]
write text as plain string instead of hex string in intermedi‐
ate 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 for the interworking with GhostScript
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 sup‐
ports 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.
[-nsp]
normally subpathes are used if the output format support them.
This option turns off subpathes.
[-mergelines]
Some output formats permit the representation of filled poly‐
gons 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 Post‐
Script output. pstoedit is able to recombine these, if they fol‐
low 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 produc‐
ing 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 some‐
time 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 sub paths. Several output formats don't support Post‐
Script pathes containing sub pathes, i.e. pathes with intermedi‐
ate 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. letter that have a "hole". When the -ssp option is
set, pstoedit tries to eliminate these problems. However, this
option is CPU time intensive!
[-flat flatness factor]
If the output format does not support curves in the way Post‐
Script 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 finer approximations.
[-sclip]
simulate clipping. Most output formats of pstoedit don't 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 dif‐
ferent from the input due to clipping. In addition, this "simu‐
lated clipping" is not exactly the same as defined in Post‐
Script. There might be lines drawn at the 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 stan‐
dard 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 OPTIONSpstoedit allows passing individual options to a 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 dou‐
ble-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
This driver uses the C++ API of ImageMagick or GraphicsMagick to
finally produce different output formats. The output format is deter‐
mined 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.
No driver specific options
swf - SWF driver:
[-cubic]
cubic ???
[-trace]
trace ???
svg - scalable vector graphics
[-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 pathes
[-noviewbox]
don't 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
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 pathes
[-noviewbox]
don't 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
cgmb1 - CGM binary Format (V1)
No driver specific options
cgmb - CGM binary Format (V3)
No driver specific options
cgmt - CGM textual Format
No driver specific options
mif - (Frame)Maker Intermediate Format
[-nopage]
do not add a separate Page entry
rtf - RTF Format
No driver specific options
wemf - Wogls version of EMF
[-df]
write info about font processing
[-dumpfontmap]
write info about font mapping
[-size:psbbox]
use the bounding box as calculated by the PostScript frontent
as size
[-size:fullpage]
set the size to the size of a full page
[-size:automatic]
let windows calculate the bounding box (default)
[-keepimages]
debug option - keep the embedded bitmaps as external files
[-useoldpolydraw]
do not use Windows PolyDraw but an emulation of it - sometimes
needed for certain programs reading the EMF files
[-OO]
generate OpenOffice compatible EMF file
wemfc - Wogls version of EMF with experimental clip support
[-df]
write info about font processing
[-dumpfontmap]
write info about font mapping
[-size:psbbox]
use the bounding box as calculated by the PostScript frontent
as size
[-size:fullpage]
set the size to the size of a full page
[-size:automatic]
let windows calculate the bounding box (default)
[-keepimages]
debug option - keep the embedded bitmaps as external files
[-useoldpolydraw]
do not use Windows PolyDraw but an emulation of it - sometimes
needed for certain programs reading the EMF files
[-OO]
generate OpenOffice compatible EMF file
wemfnss - Wogls version of EMF - no subpathes
[-df]
write info about font processing
[-dumpfontmap]
write info about font mapping
[-size:psbbox]
use the bounding box as calculated by the PostScript frontent
as size
[-size:fullpage]
set the size to the size of a full page
[-size:automatic]
let windows calculate the bounding box (default)
[-keepimages]
debug option - keep the embedded bitmaps as external files
[-useoldpolydraw]
do not use 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 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 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 approxi‐
mation 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 approxi‐
mation 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 pro‐
duced by using a fontmap file. The following types of names are sup‐
ported :
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]
don't 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]
don't 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]
don't 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.pen‐
guin.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 function‐
ality.
[-colors string]
"original" to retain original colors (default), "theme" to con‐
vert randomly to theme colors, or "theme-lum" also to vary lumi‐
nance
[-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 don't want to see this, uncomment the corre‐
sponding 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 don't want to see this, uncomment the correspond‐
ing line in makefile and make again
this is a long description for the VTKe driver
[-VTKeoption integer]
just an example
wmf - Windows metafile
[-m]
map to Arial
[-nf]
emulate narrow fonts
[-drawbb]
draw bounding box
[-p]
prune line ends
[-nfw]
Newer versions of Windows (2000, XP, Vista) 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 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 options 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
Windows anyway. In that case the output is portable but never‐
theless not split and still looks fine.
[-winbb]
let the Windows API calculate the Bounding Box (Windows only)
[-OO]
generate OpenOffice compatible EMF file
emf - Enhanced Windows metafile
[-m]
map to Arial
[-nf]
emulate narrow fonts
[-drawbb]
draw bounding box
[-p]
prune line ends
[-nfw]
Newer versions of Windows (2000, XP, Vista) 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 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 options 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
Windows anyway. In that case the output is portable but never‐
theless not split and still looks fine.
[-winbb]
let the Windows API calculate the Bounding Box (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 postcript flattener, instead it
uses the PostScript program ps2ai.ps which is installed in the Ghost‐
Script 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 don't convert nicely or at all
using ps2ai.ps. So a native pstoedit driver would be much better. Any‐
one 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 Post‐
Script'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://cm.bell-labs.com/who/hobby/MetaPost.html
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 doesn't support
multi-page output, so this probably 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 mem‐
ory capacity.
* Some PostScript constructs are not supported directly by "pic‐
ture", but can be handled by external packages. If a figure uses
color, the top-level document will need to do a "\usepack‐
age{color}". 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 portabil‐
ity; any LaTeX2e system can handle the picture environment, even
if it can't 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 sur‐
rounding 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 for‐
mat 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 envi‐
ronment 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 addi‐
tional 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 envi‐
ronment 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 suc‐
cessfully 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 doesn't 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 origi‐
nal PostScript "program" uses these new operator in the new meaning and
does not use the original ones anymoew. 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 oth‐
ers could show up in addition to those.
RESTRICTIONS
* Non-standard fonts (e.g. TeXbitmap 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 in the replace‐
ment font. This is done for each text fragment displayed. Spe‐
cial character encoding support is limited in this case. If a
character cannot be mapped into the target format, pstoedit dis‐
plays 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 clip‐
ping (mainly due to limitations in the target format). You can
try to use the -sclip option to simulate clipping. However, this
doesn't 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 to step through the individual pages of a
converted PostScript document. This applet can easily be acti‐
vated from a html-document. See the con‐
trib/java/java1/readme_java1.txt or con‐
trib/java/java2/readme_java2.htm file for more details.
FAQS
1. Why do letters like O or B get strange if converted to tgif/xfig
using the -dt option?
This is because most output format drivers don't support composite
paths with intermediate gaps (moveto's) and second don't 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" beeing filled with black color
instead of beeing 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?
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,
http://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
http://www.facebook.com/pages/pstoedit/260606183958062.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
* Klaus Steinberger Klaus.Steinberger_AT_physik.uni-muenchen.de
wrote the initial version of this manpage.
* Lar Kaufman revised the increasingly complex command syntax dia‐
grams and updated the structure and content of this manpage fol‐
lowing release 2.5.
* David B. Rosen rosen_AT_unr.edu provided ideas and some Post‐
Script 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 for‐
mat driver.
* Christoph Jaeschke provided the OS/2 metafile (MET) output for‐
mat 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 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. http://bourbon.usc.edu:8001/
* Reini Urban rurban_AT_sbox.tu-graz.ac.at provided input for the
extended DXF output format driver.(http://autocad.xarch.at/)
* Glenn M. Lewis glenn_AT_gmlewis.com provided RenderMan (RIB),
Real3D (RPL), and LightWave 3D (LWO) output format drivers.
(http://www.gmlewis.com/)
* 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 for‐
mat 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 PowerPoint output format driver.
* The PowerPoint driver uses the libzip library -
http://www.nih.at/libzip. Under 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 for‐
mat driver for sketch ( http://www.skencil.org/ )
* Rolf Niepraschk (niepraschk_AT_ptb.de) converted the HTML man
page to LaTeX. This allows to generate the UNIX style and the
HTML manual from this base format.
* Several others sent smaller bug fixed and bug reports. Sorry if
I don't 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 bir‐
rell_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 to create 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 Rus‐
sell 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 attri‐
bution 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 addi‐
tional plugins.
Aladdin Ghostscript is a redistributable software package with copy‐
right restrictions controlled by Aladdin Software.
pstoedit has no other relation to Ghostscript besides calling it in a
subprocess.
The authors, contributors, and distributors of pstoedit are not respon‐
sible for its use for any purpose, or for the results generated
thereby.
Restrictions such as the foregoing may apply in other countries accord‐
ing to international conventions and agreements.
Conversion Tools April 2013 PSTOEDIT(1)
