0

i am trying to us Ghostpcl to convert pcl files to pdf on linux. In the main, this is working well and the majority of documents are converting well. However, some documents have boxes and shading and these are not rendering well at all. The resolution is very poor and as a result any text on top of the shading is almost unreadable. Additionally some alignment is slightly out down the right hand margin.

i have also used visual software pcl2pdf which does a good job on the shading but unfortunately does not substitute all of the fonts correctly.

the pcl file can be found here https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/86110783/20170215102450_65702421.pcl the ghostpcl converted pdf https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/86110783/ghostpcl20170215102450_65702421.pdf the pcl2pdf pdf

The command i am using for converting the pcl to pdf is

/opt/ghostpcl/gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sFONTPATH=/opt/fonts -dBATCH -dNOPAG
EPROMPT -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -sOutputFile=$1.pdf $1.pcl

i have tried various different switches to no avail.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated

equatech
  • 1
  • 3

1 Answers1

0

If the pdfwrite device can't handle a graphic primitive 'as is' it will render it to an image. The default resolution is 720 dpi which is ordinarily good for most purposes, but you can alter it with the -r switch.

Note that for PCL its probably important to set the resolution to 300 or 600 dpi, as that is the only resolution PCL is defined for. The 'shading' you are talking about is, I think, a pattern, and that will only repeat properly at the precise resolution (or integer multiples thereof) for which its intended.

Even if you run at 600 dpi its probably going to look odd as you zoom in and out of the PDF file.

I'm not sure what exactly you are complaining about regarding alignment, do you mean the fact that the text doesn't fit in the box ? That will be because its using a substitute for the missing font, and the substitute has different metrics to the original.

I don't see a link to the pcl2pdf file.

KenS
  • 30,202
  • 3
  • 34
  • 51