Overview

pstoedit translates PostScript and PDF graphics into other vector formats.

Supported Formats

Currently pstoedit can generate the following major formats:

• Tgif .obj format (for tgif version >= 3)
• .fig format for xfig
• pdf - Adobe's Portable Document Format
• gnuplot format
• Flattened PostScript (with or without Bezier curves)
• DXF - CAD exchange format
• LWO - LightWave 3D
• RIB - RenderMan
• RPL - Real3D
• Java 1 or Java 2 applet
• Idraw format (in fact a special form of EPS that idraw can read)
• Tcl/Tk
• HPGL
• AI (Adobe Illustrator) (based on ps2ai.ps - not a real pstoedit driver - see notes below and manual)
• Windows Meta Files (WMF) (Windows only)
• Enhanced Windows Meta Files (EMF) (Windows, but also Linux/Unix if libemf is available)
• OS/2 meta files (OS/2 only)
• PIC format for troff/groff
• MetaPost format for usage with TeX/LaTeX
• LaTeX2e picture
• Kontour
• GNU Metafile (plotutils / libplot)
• Skencil ( http://www.skencil.org )
• Mathematica
• via ImageMagick to any format supported by ImageMagick
• SWF
• CNC G code
• VTK files for ParaView and similar visualization tools

Besides these some further very special formats are supported. See the pstoedit.htm for a complete list of available drivers.

The following formats are available as additional plugins on a shareware basis. See http://www.pstoedit.net/plugins/ for more details.

• (Frame)Maker Intermediate Format (MIF)
• CGM Format (both binary and textual)
• SVG - scalable vector format. One candidate of the W3C for a web standard for vector drawings. See http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/ for more details.
• Better Enhanced Windows Meta Files (EMF) (supports curves and compound pathes and does more accurate text formatting) (Windows only)
• RTF (MS Word) (Windows only)

Implementing support for other formats should be very easy. The architecture of pstoedit consists of a PostScript frontend which needs to call a PostScript interpreter like Ghostscript and the individual backends which are pugged into a kind of framework. This framework can be used independently from the PostScript frontend from any other program. The framework provides a uniform interface to all different backends. You need a C++ compiler to compile and GhostScript to run pstoedit. pstoedit should run on all Un*x like systems (including cygwin) and has also been ported to OS/2, Windows 9x/NT/2K/XP/Vista, and RiscOS.

Since version 3.00 it is possible to add new drivers without even recompiling the core program. pstoedit can load additional drivers as plugins.

Download

You can download pstoedit:

• Source tarball: pstoedit-3.60.tar.gz
• binary for Windows 32 bit
• binary for Windows 64 bit
• additional plugins
• a version of pstoedit that can be used as graphic import filter for MS-Office, Paint Shop Pro, or Photoline

In case of download problems, visit this page via the alternate URL.

pstoedit can also be used from within gsview via the "Edit|Convert to vector" menu.

More Information

You get can more information from:

• The manual,
• The readme file.
• The change log

pstoedit also cooperates with autotrace. Autotrace can 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/

Related Links

Some links more or less related to pstoedit can be found here.

Primary Author

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