Capturing print output as vector format (PDF,SVG,EMF,etc.)

Question

BACKGROUND

• I am using a commercial application on windows that creates a drawing
• This application allows only two output options: (1) save as a bitmap file and (2) print to a printer
• the bitmap is useless for my purposes - I want the vectors
• Looking at the print output (I sent to the Windows XPS print driver) it seems clear based on the amount of zooming I can do without loss of detail that the underlying vectors are being send to the print driver
• Once I get the vectors, I will be writing some code to transform them for some other use.

MY QUESTION

• Whart are my options for geting the vectors from the print? (am open to both commercial and open source)

OPTIONS I HAVE THOUGHT OF SO FAR

• Take the bitmap and use a program like VectorMagick to. I have tried this approach. It does not produce the fidelity I seek even when the original bitmap is large. Practically speaking I believe that using any tracing approach will not give me the quality vectors I need.
• Print to the Adobe PDF driver. This technically works. I have Adobe CS4 so I can print to it save the resulting PDF and then import the PDF into Illustrator and then export as some other vector format. The problem with this approach is money/licensing. I own a personal copy of Adobe CS4 - so this is fine for me. But I need to capture the vectors at work for business purposes - and no I'm not going to install my personal copy of CS4 at work.
• Is there a "print driver" that captures the print output directly into a vector format? I have seen some commercial ones via google. If you've used them, I would like to hear about your experience with this technique. I could write my own and in that case do you have links to any existing code that I can start with.

Answer 1

My favorite is the open source (GPL) PDFCreator

Answer 2

If this is an ongoing solution you need then you might need to buy something or build your own. If it's a onetime affair you might look to use an 'older' Lexmark PCL printer driver. I'd recommend something like the T610. If you download the PCL driver and install it you can modify the defaults and change the Graphics option from XL or Autoselect to GL/2. This will force the driver to output GL/2 output which is vector (GL/2 is a plotter language). This might do the trick for you. Other printer drivers may have the abiltiy to force GL/2 (vs. Raster) but I'm not sure. I use to work for Lexmark and have used this before for a similar requirement.

Ensure you use the Lexmark 'Custom' driver as I don't think the Microsoft-based one support this feature.

...pausing while I investigate a few things............I'm back...

Another option is to find another GL/2 driver or build you own...I just took a few minutes to search the web and came up with a few other options that might work.

Build you own: I've built drivers (minidrivers) using the Windows Driver Development Kit (DDK), it's quite simple to construct basic drivers. Looks like there is a setting you can set to enable GL/2 output: Enabling HP-GL/2 Vector Graphics Support (PCL-5e) in the GPD

Alternate drivers: Depending on the OS you are on there is probably a 'generic' GL/2 driver built in. I believe XP has a Hewlett-Packard HP-GL/2 Plotter. You might need to check the license (as with the Lexmark solution) but it might work for you and as it's part of the OS there shouldn't be concern about using it. It's probably written and copyrighted to Microsoft

Keep in mind you will have to do some work to convert GL/2 to whatever output you want but it should be a matter of an simple translator to convert each set of commands. There may be tools out there to help. Here is a quick link to Lexmark GL/2 reference which might be enough to get you going, check out the GL/2 information under the PCL section: Lexmark Technical Reference Guide

Postscript: The last option I have is to use a generic Postscript driver. Postscript should output the vector images as vector graphics in the Postscript but my knowledge of this is limited at best.

Output: If you need the output to route to file you can set the port to FILE: which requries user intervention, or install something like Redmon (or connect with me and I'll send you our port monitor that allows for automatic output to file).

Hope this helps in some way.