pstoedit [-v -help]

pstoedit

[-include name of a PostScript file to be included] [-df font name] [-nomaptoisolatin1] [-dis] [-nq] [-nc] [-nsp] [-mergelines] [-filledrecttostroke] [-mergetext] [-dt] [-adt] [-ndt] [-correctdefinefont] [-pti] [-pta] [-xscale number] [-yscale number] [-split] [-v] [-usebbfrominput] [-ssp] [-uchar character] [-nb] [-page page number] [-flat flatness factor] [-sclip] [-ups] [-rgb] [-noclip] [-t2fontsast1] [-keep] [-gstest] [-nfr] [-rotate angle (0-360)] [-fontmap name of font map file for pstoedit] [-pagesize page format] [-help] [-bo] [-psarg argument string] -f "format[:options]" [-gsregbase GhostScript base registry path] [ inputfile [outputfile] ]

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

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.

This manpage documents release 3.42 of pstoedit.

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

pstoedit -help

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

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

pstoedit works by redefining the some basic painting operators of PostScript, e.g. stroke or show (bitmaps drawn by the image operator are not supported by all backends.) 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 formate by specifying the -bo option. See "Available formats and their specific options" below.

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

This output is read by end-processing functions of pstoedit and triggers the drawing functions in the selected back end driver, or backend.

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.

[-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

[-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 backends 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.

[-noclip]

don't use clipping (relevant only if backend 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 backend, but might be used by other backends 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.) You can switch Ghostscript into PostScript Level 1 only mode by -psarg "level1.ps". 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. 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.

-f "format[:options]"

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

[-gsregbase GhostScript base registry path]

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

[-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.

[-dt]

Draw text - Text is drawn as polygons. This might produce a large output file. This option is automatically switched on if the selected backend 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".

[-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 definefont 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 produce wrongly positioned characters. This is due to limitiations in most backends 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 "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 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 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 backends 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.

[-fontmap name of font map file for pstoedit]

The font map is a simple text file containing lines in the following format:

document_font_name target_font_name

Lines beginning with % are considerd comments

If a font name contains spaces, use the "font name with spaces" notation.

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 backend are provided by Scott Pakin (pakin_AT_cs.uiuc.edu). Another example is wemf.fmp to be used under Windows. See the misc directory of the pstoedit source distribution.

[-dis]

Open a display during processing by Ghostscript. Some files only work correctly this way.

[-nq]

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

[-v]

Switch on verbose mode. Some additional information is shown during processing.

[-nb]

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

[-ups]

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

[-gstest]

perform a basic test for the interworking with GhostScript

[-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 backend 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 backends that originally support curves. This can be forced via the -nc option.

[-nsp]

normally subpathes are used if the backend support them. This option turns off subpathes.

[-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 backends 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 backends 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 sub paths. Several backend don't support PostScript pathes containing sub pathes, i.e. pathes with intermediate movetos. In the normal case, each subpath is treated as an independent path for such backends. 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 backend 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 finer approximations.

[-sclip]

simulate clipping. Most backends 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 backends. 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 the double size. Also clipping of text is not supported unless you also use the -dt option.

[ 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

No driver specific options

No driver specific options

No driver specific options

No driver specific options

No driver specific options

No driver specific options

[plotformat string]

plotutil format to generate

[plotformat string]

plotutil format to generate

[plotformat string]

plotutil format to generate

[plotformat string]

plotutil format to generate

[plotformat string]

plotutil format to generate

[plotformat string]

plotutil format to generate

[plotformat string]

plotutil format to generate

[plotformat string]

plotutil format to generate

[plotformat string]

plotutil format to generate

[plotformat string]

plotutil format to generate

[plotformat string]

plotutil format to generate

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.

No driver specific options

[-cubic]

cubic ???

[-trace]

trace ???

[-localdtd]

use local DTD

[-standalone]

create standalong 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)

No driver specific options

No driver specific options

No driver specific options

[-nopage]

do not add a separate Page entry

No driver specific options

[-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

[-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

[-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

[-pen]

plotter is pen plotter

[-pencolors number]

number of pen colors available

[-filltype string]

select fill type e.g. FT 1

[-rot90]

rotate hpgl by 90 degrees

[-rot180]

rotate hpgl by 180 degrees

[-rot270]

rotate hpgl by 270 degrees

[-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

No driver specific options

[-polyaslines]

use LINE instead of POLYLINE in DXF

[-mm]

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

[-ctl]

map colors to layers

[-splineaspolyline]

approximate splines with PolyLines (only for -f dxf_s)

[-splineasnurb]

experimental (only for -f dxf_s)

[-splineasbspline]

experimental (only for -f dxf_s)

[-splineassinglespline]

experimental (only for -f dxf_s)

[-splineasmultispline]

experimental (only for -f dxf_s)

[-splineasbezier]

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

[-splineprecision number]

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

[-polyaslines]

use LINE instead of POLYLINE in DXF

[-mm]

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

[-ctl]

map colors to layers

[-splineaspolyline]

approximate splines with PolyLines (only for -f dxf_s)

[-splineasnurb]

experimental (only for -f dxf_s)

[-splineasbspline]

experimental (only for -f dxf_s)

[-splineassinglespline]

experimental (only for -f dxf_s)

[-splineasmultispline]

experimental (only for -f dxf_s)

[-splineasbezier]

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

[-splineprecision number]

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

The xfig backend supports special fontnames, which may be produced by using a fontmap file. The following types of names are supported :

General notation: 
"Postscript Font Name" ((LaTeX|PostScript|empty)(::special)::)XFigFontName
 
Examples:

Helvetica LaTeX::SansSerif Courier LaTeX::special::Typewriter GillSans "AvantGarde Demi" Albertus PostScript::special::"New Century Schoolbook Italic" Symbol ::special::Symbol (same as Postscript::special::Symbol) See also the file examplefigmap.fmp in the misc directory of the pstoedit source distribution for an example font map file for xfig. Please note that the Fontname has to be among those supported by xfig. See - http://www.xfig.org/userman/fig-format.html for a list of legal font names

[-startdepth number]

Set the initial depth (default 999)

[-metric]

Switch to centimeter display (default inches)

[-usecorrectfontsize]

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)

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)

No driver specific options

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

No driver specific options

No driver specific options

[java class name string]

name of java class to generate

[java class name string]

name of java class to generate

No driver specific options

[-integers]

round all coordinates to the nearest integer

No driver specific options

[-eofillfills]

Filling is used for eofill (default is not to fill)

No driver specific options

See http://home.vr-web.de/ hans-juergen-jahn/software/devpcb.html for more details.

No driver specific options

See also: http://pcb.sourceforge.net

No driver specific options

See also: http://pcb.sourceforge.net

No driver specific options

No driver specific options

No driver specific options

No driver specific options

this is a long description for the sample driver

[-sampleoption integer]

just an example

No driver specific options

[-height number]

page height in terms of characters

[-width number]

page width in terms of characters

[-dump]

dump text pieces

[-ta]

text as attribute

[-R]

swap HW

[-I]

no impress

[-n string]

tagnames

[-m]

map to Arial

[-nf]

emulate narrow fonts

[-drawbb]

draw bounding box

[-p]

prune line ends

[-nfw]

Newer versions of Windows (2000, XP) 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 nevertheless not split and still looks fine.

[-winbb]

let the Windows API calculate the Bounding Box (Windows only)

[-OO]

generate OpenOffice compatible EMF file

[-m]

map to Arial

[-nf]

emulate narrow fonts

[-drawbb]

draw bounding box

[-p]

prune line ends

[-nfw]

Newer versions of Windows (2000, XP) 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 nevertheless not split and still looks fine.

[-winbb]

let the Windows API calculate the Bounding Box (Windows only)

[-OO]

generate OpenOffice compatible EMF file

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/.

The ps2ai backend is not a native pstoedit backend. It does not use the pstoedit postcript flattener, instead it uses the PostScript program ps2ai.ps which is installed in the GhostScript distribution directory. It is included to provide the same "look-and-feel" for the conversion to AI. The additional benefit is that this conversion is now available also via the "convert-to-vector" menu of Gsview. However, lot's of files don't 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 backend.

Note that, as far as Scott knows, MetaPost does not support PostScript's eofill. The metapost backend 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

*

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.

*

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}". 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 backend are in terms of \unitlength, so scaling a figure is simply a matter of doing a "\setlength{\unitlength}{...}".

*

The backend currently supports one backend-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 backend useful? One answer is portability; 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 backend -- hyperlinks to the surrounding document (with help from the hyperref package).

To implement a new backend 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 backend.