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

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 concaten开发者_如何学运维ate 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?

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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.

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Ghostscript can output PostScript (which is a vector file) which can be directly sent to some types of printers. For example, if you're using an LPR capable printer, the PS file can be directly set to that printer using something like this project: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/printing/lpr.aspx

There are also some commercial options which can print a PDF (although I'm not sure if the internal mechanism is vector or bitmap based), for example http://www.tallcomponents.com/pdfcontrols2-features.aspx or http://www.tallcomponents.com/pdfrasterizer3.aspx

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I finally figured out that there is an option that addresses my general requirement of embedding a vector format into a print job, but it doesn't work with GDI based printing.

The XPS file format created by Microsoft XPS Writer print driver can be printed from WPF, using the ReachFramework.dll included in .NET. By using WPF for printing instead of GDI, it's possible to embed an XPS document page into a larger print document.

The downside is, WPF printing works quite a bit different, so all the support code that directly uses stuff in the Sytem.Drawing namespace has to be re-written.

Here's the basic outline of how to embed the XPS document:

Open the document:

XpsDocument xpsDoc = new XpsDocument(filename, System.IO.FileAccess.Read);
var document = xpsDoc.GetFixedDocumentSequence().DocumentPaginator;

// pass the document into a custom DocumentPaginator that will decide
// what order to print the pages:
var mypaginator = new myDocumentPaginator(new DocumentPaginator[] { document });

// pass the paginator into PrintDialog.PrintDocument() to do the actual printing:
new PrintDialog().PrintDocument(mypaginator, "printjobname");

Then create a descendant of DocumentPaginator, that will do your actual printing. Override the abstract methods, in particular the GetPage should return DocumentPages in the correct order. Here's my proof of concept code that demonstrates how to append custom content to a list of Xps documents:

public override DocumentPage GetPage(int pageNumber)
{
    for (int i = 0; i < children.Count; i++)
    {
        if (pageNumber >= pageCounts[i])
            pageNumber -= pageCounts[i];
        else
            return FixFixedPage(children[i].GetPage(pageNumber));
    }
    if (pageNumber < PageCount)
    {
        DrawingVisual dv = new DrawingVisual();
        var dc = dv.Drawing.Append();
        dc = dv.RenderOpen();
        DoRender(pageNumber, dc); // some method to render stuff to the DrawingContext
        dc.Close();
        return new DocumentPage(dv);
    }
    return null;
}

When trying to print to another XPS document, it gives an exception "FixedPage cannot contain another FixedPage", and a post by H.Alipourian demonstrates how to fix it: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/da/wpf/thread/841e804b-9130-4476-8709-0d2854c11582

private DocumentPage FixFixedPage(DocumentPage page)
{
    if (!(page.Visual is FixedPage))
        return page;

    // Create a new ContainerVisual as a new parent for page children
    var cv = new ContainerVisual();
    foreach (var child in ((FixedPage)page.Visual).Children)
    {
        // Make a shallow clone of the child using reflection
        var childClone = (UIElement)child.GetType().GetMethod(
            "MemberwiseClone", BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.NonPublic
            ).Invoke(child, null);

        // Setting the parent of the cloned child to the created ContainerVisual
        // by using Reflection.
        // WARNING: If we use Add and Remove methods on the FixedPage.Children,
        // for some reason it will throw an exception concerning event handlers
        // after the printing job has finished.
        var parentField = childClone.GetType().GetField(
            "_parent", BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.NonPublic);
        if (parentField != null)
        {
            parentField.SetValue(childClone, null);
            cv.Children.Add(childClone);
        }
    }

    return new DocumentPage(cv, page.Size, page.BleedBox, page.ContentBox);
}

Sorry that it's not exactly compiling code, I just wanted to provide an overview of the pieces of code necessary to make it work to give other people a head start on all the disparate pieces that need to come together to make it work. Trying to create a more generalized solution would be much more complex than the scope of this answer.

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While not open source and not .NET native (Delphi based I believe, but offers a precompiled .NET library), Quick PDF can render a PDF to an EMF file which you could load into your Graphics object.