Re: st: Printing graphs to pdf under program control

[Gary Longton <glongton@fhcrc.org>]

Ian Watson wrote:
>   Has anyone had success passing a filename under program control to
>   Acrobat Distiller on a Windows platform?
>
>   I wish to print my graph to a pdf file, but graph export (to pdf) is
>   not available under Windows. I can of course print to Acrobat
>   Distiller manually. But what I want to do is automate the procedure
>   inside a do file.  . . .

>    . . .  Finally, not all of the print graphic controls from the dialogue box
>   (Graphic Preferences - Printer) appear to be available in syntax, or
>   have I overlooked something? In particular, I notice missing are the
>   color mapping options, and the scaling options.
>
>   Any advice on these matters would be greatly appreciated.
Ian,

An approach which uses Distiller, rather than the 3rd party eps converter that 
Philippe suggests, involves setting the "watched folders" in Distiller (settings 
menu).  \in and \out subdirectories of this directory will be created.   -Graph 
export- to the \in subdirectory in ps format, i.e.

   .graph export <watched folder path>\in\<filename>.ps, ps_options

The ps file will be automatically converted to pdf and placed in the \out 
subdirectory of your "watched folder".

Included among the -graph export- ps options is the scale (-mag()-) option you 
are looking for, along with page size, margin size, orientation, etc.

Though I've often used -graph export- (to ps) and Distiller to generate pdf 
files, I have to admit that I've not used the "watched folders" setting in the 
past to do this (did not really know it was possible until recently). 
Interactive conversion of multiple ps files to pdf is otherwise an easy 3-click 
procedure with Distiller when it is set as the default app for opening ps files, 
and just a couple of clicks more when not.

- Gary




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