Can a PDF be converted to a vector image format that can be printed from .NET?

Question

We have a .NET app which prints to both real printers and PDF, currently using PDFsharp, although that part can be changed if there's a better option. Most of the output is generated text or images, but there can be one or more pages that get appended to the end. That page(s) are provided by the end-user in PDF format.

When printing to paper, our users use pre-printed paper, but in the case of an exported PDF, we concatenate those pages to the end, since they're already in PDF format.

We want to be able to embed those PDFs directly into the print stream so they don't need pre-printed paper. However, there aren't really any good options for rendering a PDF to a GDI page (System.Drawing.Graphics).

Is there a vector format the PDF could be converted to by some external program, that could rendered to a GDI+ page without being degraded by conversion to a bitmap first?

Answer 1

In an article titled "How To Convert PDF to EMF In .NET," I have shown how to do this using our PDFOne .NET product. EMFs are vector graphics and you can render them on the printer canvas.

A simpler alternative for you is PDF overlay explained in another article titled "PDF Overlay - Stitching PDF Pages Together in .NET." PDFOne allows x-y offsets in overlays that allows you stitch pages on the edges. In the article cited here, I have overlaid the pages one over another by setting the offsets to zero. You will have set it to page width and height.

DISCLAIMER: I work for Gnostice.