[Libreoffice-bugs] [Bug 49832] PRINTING: Writer rasterizes SVG for output to a printer or into PDF, which leads to poor quality laser printing.

[bugzilla-daemon at freedesktop.org]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=49832

--- Comment #16 from Zak McKracken <Zak.McKracken at gmx.de> 2012-08-29 22:18:29 UTC ---
If an SVG is using features that cannot be directly translated into postscript,
it must be rasterized before printing, and I think that is also the reason why
it is rasterized in PDF form. The same happens with EPS, if they somehow
contain transparency, or even with Hires PNG files if they have an alpha
channel (even if that channel is empty) -- they will be re-rastered.

My workflow for preventing that from happenign with EPS images is: print to
file (make sure to use postscript printer!) and convert with ps2pdf, since LO
(I'm still stuck with 3.4.4) will always raster EPS otherwise.

The only things that are being preserved regardless are EMF and WMF images
(which don't always work for different reasons) and Draw objects, as long as
they don't use transparency. This also means that for PDF conversion,
converting the SVG to draw first (i.e. having an editable SVG) will solve the
problem, although it will not solve the problem of trying convert SVG to ODG,
which is not possible without losses, except in simple cases.

I think transparency as well as SVG filter effects (blur for example) are not
easily solvable, at least for PDF export.

My current solution for SVGs is to export them as EPS from Inkscape, then use
the workflow above. This means I can only use SVG fatures that will survive EPS
conversion, but more's not possible if you need a PDF.

My favourite solution for the future is to have LO embed SVGs and EPSs,
preserve whatever is possible as vector graphics during PDF export and
rasterize the rest at a user-specified resolution. For direct printing, it
should be technically possible to render an SVG at the printer's native
resolution at printing time, although I don't know how the printer will handle
such an amount of data, and how this would have to be implemented in LO.

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