Frequently Asked Questions

"XPS" stands for "XML Paper Specification" and is a document format as well as a native print spooler format in Microsoft Windows®. The XPS document format consists of XML markup that defines the layout of a document and the visual appearance of each page along with rendering rules for distributing, archiving, rendering, processing and printing the documents. Just like PDF, the XPS document format enables users to view, print, and archive any type of documents without the original program that created them and without loss of fidelity.

For developers who are looking for a software development component to integrate into their applications, Apryse offers a PDF to XPS conversion API as part of PDF SDK.

PDFN SDK is a comprehensive, high-quality PDF developer toolkit for working with PDF files at all levels. Using the PDF library, developers can flexibly implement and create powerful PDF solutions and applications that can generate, manipulate, view, render and print PDF documents without any third-party software dependencies.

PDFN SDK is available as a .NET component and as a cross-platform Java and C/C++ PDF library available on a wide range of platforms (i.e. Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, etc).

For more details, please vist (https://apryse.com/products/core-sdk/pdf/) or contact a Apryse representative for more information.

PDF2XPS is a completely stand alone application and does not include any dependencies on third-party components or software.

By default, PDF2XPS saves converted files in the current working folder. To specify another output location, use the '-o' (or --output) parameter. For example:

pdf2xps --o "c:\My Output" 1.pdf 2.pdf 3.pdf

Note: If the specified path does not exist, PDF2XPS will attempt to create the necessary folders.

PDF2XPS will, by default, create a single file with the name of the input PDF file. The output filename can be changed using the '--prefix' option. For example, the following command-line generates an output document named outdoc.xps:

pdf2xps ---prefix outdoc mydoc.pdf

By default, PDF2XPS will convert all PDF pages into an output XPS file. You can specify a subset of pages to convert using the '-a' or '--pages' options. For example:

pdf2xps -a 1,3,10 in.pdf

will convert only pages 1, 3, and 10. Please note that PDF2XPS assumes that all pages are numbered sequentially starting from page 1.

To specify a range of pages, use dash character between numbers. For example:

pdf2xps -a 1,10-20,50- in.pdf

will convert the first page, pages in the range from 10 to 20 and all pages starting with page 50 to the last page in the document.

All even pages can be selected using the 'e' (or 'even') string. For example, the following line converts all even pages:

pdf2xps --pages even in.pdf

Similarly odd pages can be selected using the 'o' (or 'odd') string. The following line renders all odd pages in the document and every page in the range from 100 to the last page:

pdf2xps --pages odd,100- in.pdf

PDF2XPS supports batch conversion of many PDF files in a single pass. To convert all PDF files in a given folder(s) you can use the following syntax:

pdf2xps myfolder1

The '--subfolders' option can be used to recursively process all subfolders. For example, the following line will convert all documents in 'myfolder1' and 'myfolder2' as well as all subfolders:

pdf2xps --subfolders myfolder1 myfolder2

By default, PDF2XPS will convert all files with the extension '.pdf'. To select different files based on the extension use the '--extension' parameter. For example, to convert all PDF documents with a custom extension '.blob', you could use the following line:

pdf2xps --extension .blob --subfolders myfolder1

The use of wild characters is also allowed. For example, to convert all PDF files starting with 'x' in the current folder use:

pdf2xps x*.pdf

By default, PDF2XPS will convert PDF files to the XPS format. You can specify the output format to be OpenXPS using the --openxps option. The following command-line would generate the OpenXPS File 1.oxps:

pdf2xps --openxps 1.pdf

PDF2XPS will, without user intervention, convert documents secured with a master/owner password. If the document is secured using a user (or 'file open') password, PDF2XPS will prompt you to enter the password.

For unattended conversion, the password can also be specified directly on the command-line using the '-p' (or --password) option. For example:

pdf2xps -p secret secured.pdf

The above command line will convert PDF to XPS and will use the provided password ('secret') to open the secured document (i.e. 'secured.pdf').

Note: PDF2XPS supports all standard security options available in PDF, including 40 and 128 bit RC4 encryption, Crypt filters, and AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) encryption.

Since PDF2XPS always attempts to maintain the original document appearance, the vast majority of output files will successfully preserve the appearance and quality of the original PDF documents. Occasionally, there will be PDF elements that have no equivalent in XPS. In these cases PDF2XPS will by default render the necessary elements at 92 dpi or at the resolution given by the --dpi parameter. For example:

pdf2xps --dpi 200 doc.pdf

would render those elements at 200 dots per inch.

In other select cases, to generate the exact appearance of the original PDF document, an entire page may need to be rendered. In these cases rendering can be disabled using the '--norender' option as in the following example:

pdf2xps --norender doc.pdf

This option will preserve resolution independent properties of input PDF documents (including fonts, paths, and shadings) as well as text selection and extraction capability in XPS processing software.