Looking for developers: processing of Windows EMF files for CUPS, NX, Samba and Freedesktop.org printing

[Michael B Allen]

On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 09:35:10 +0200
Fabian Franz <FabianFranz at gmx.de> wrote:
> > The point is a *good* EMF to PostScript converter requires some serious
> > forethought and a very good understanding of GDI and PostScript and
> > where the drawing primatives intersect. It's a little like writing a
> > compiler actually.
> 
> Well, EMF to PostScript is no issue I would say. OpenOffice.org (again)
> has rather good printing quality (I'm no expert there, you might know
> better). 

Hrmm. I think I'm loosing track of what you're trying to do.

I thought you wanted to send EMF (actually windows spool files) to Samba
so you can print with the native windows print driver enabling you to
do something from this "NX" thing that you otherwise could not.

Thus you want to convert the EMF to PostScript so you can print it using
whatever Unix side printing system?

> My point was to create kind of an foomatic driver, that would export to
> EMF.
> 
> So vice versa:
> 
> PS -> EMF

Yes, now I'm totally lost :)

> While I understand that it is rather difficult to go from a "primitive"
> like EMF to PS, I believe it is not that difficult in the vice-versa way.

No. I think it would actually be harder to go from PostScript to EMF
because EMF is basically a subset of what PostScript can do. PostScript
generated from EMF would just be a "primative" linear sequence of
drawing commands (depending on how sophisticated the conversion was). But
onverting PostScript to EMF requires normalizing scaling and flatting
fonts. I think it would be quite a mess actually.

-- 
Greedo shoots first? Not in my Star Wars.