Section:

PDF to SVG Command-line Conversion

Apryse's PDF2SVG is an efficient, stand-alone command-line application that enables users to batch convert and publish PDF documents as SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), the open-standard W3C recommendation for high-end graphics on the web.

PDF2SVG enables high-quality conversion from PDF to SVG that maintains the original layout of the document and preserves hyperlinks, colors and fonts. The resulting self-contained and compact SVG files can be distributed, viewed, edited, stored, printed, and published onto web sites.

For quick and easy document navigation and viewing, PDF2SVG can be configured to create page thumbnails as well as an XML summary describing the document components such as metadata, bookmarks, annotations, etc. Using XSLT or any other XML processor, the user can quickly generate custom HTML and JavaScript 'wrappers' that enable the user to browse multi-page documents in any web browser.

Like other Apryse products, PDF2SVG does not rely on any other third-party software. PDF2SVG can be used in server environments or as a batch conversion process.

PDF2SVG is also available as a software component for embedding into third-party applications. Please see https://apryse.com/products/core-sdk/pdf/ for more information.

Why SVG?

There are many benefits of converting your documents to SVG:

  • SVG is a W3C (Web Standards Consortium) standard format and is backed by a large number of companies and non-profit organizations.
  • Free SVG viewers are widely available on major platforms and operating systems.
  • Browser support for SVG is now common.
  • Because SVG is based on XML, the document can be easily edited in a text editor. SVG XML content can be linked to back-end business processes such as databases, application servers, and other rich sources of real-time information.
  • There are a growing number of affordable and powerful SVG authoring and editing solutions.
  • Enhanced search capabilities. All text in SVG is stored in standard XML syntax and Unicode encoding that makes searching operations within a document or across large collections of documents a breeze.

Key Functions

  • Fast, High quality conversion from PDF (Portable Document Format) to SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) that maintains the original document layout and preserves hyperlinks, colors and fonts.
  • Font support: Type1, TrueType and Type0/CID Fonts
  • Color: ICC, DeviceN, Separation, RGB, CMYK, Indexed, etc.
  • Support for encrypted PDF documents (40 and 128 bit RC4, 128 bit AES).
  • Support for all kinds of patterns, functions, and compression schemes.
  • Support for all annotation types.
  • Compression and SVG optimization: Converted documents can be saved as SVGZ compressed files for fast web downloads.
  • PDF2SVG allows for generation of stand-alone SVG files (i.e. SVG files with embedded resources) as well as for SVG files with shared resources.
  • All text is converted to Unicode dramatically simplifying text manipulation, editing, and searching. PDF2SVG makes every attempt to map text to a Unicode public area, resulting in better repurposing and text-searching capabilities of converted documents.
  • Font embedding and font substitution option: The font embedding option allows for reliable and accurate font reproduction. The font substitution option produces smaller files but may not produce 100% accurate fonts on all systems.
  • Thumbnail generation.
  • Option to extract document-level information that has no counterpart in SVG (e.g. metadata, bookmarks, annotations, etc).
  • Batch conversion: Using PDF2SVG you can easily convert single files or whole PDF repositories.
  • Efficiency: PDF2SVG is based on our PDF SDK, making it extremely fast and efficient. The conversion speed is suitable for interactive and dynamic applications.
  • Support for all versions of the PDF format (PDF 1.0 to ISO32000).

Common Use Case Scenarios

  • Server-based, on-demand conversion of PDF documents to SVG.
  • Batch processing of PDF collections. PDF2SVG is particularly useful in assembling product catalogues and brochures.
  • PDF content extraction and repurposing through SVG and XML.

Operating Systems Supported

  • Windows, Linux and Mac.

System Requirements

  • At least 10 MB of free disk space.
  • Memory requirement is heavily dependent on the nature of the document being converted into an image file.

Example

sh

1#!/bin/sh
2echo "Example 1) Convert all PDF documents in this folder to SVG using default options:"
3./pdf2svg -o test_out *.pdf --lic_key "<PDFNET_LICENSE_KEY>"

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