QGIS » QGIS Application

Wait...
Exporting to PDF always behaves as described.
Printing doesn't seem to now, although I'm pretty sure it did before I restarted QGIS...

Cannot reproduce this. Exporting a line layer to PDF and opening in inkspace showed the lines to be vector.
Note that point marker symbols are sometimes printed as raster (new symbology svn markers should be vector though)

It is with line and polygon layers.
I'm getting the same results on two different computers, with 1.5, 1.6 and trunk, and with new and old symbology. Both machines are running Windows.
I guess I'd better find a machine to do a clean install on... maybe that will show up a setting that affects it.

Also an issue here. Running 1.6 on two computers (W7 and XP). Same result with QG 1.5. It workes just fine in 1.4, however.

I have done further testing on this issue under QGIS 1.6 and QGIS Trunk e5863992 (SVN r15131). I can confirm that this bug happens on windows and not linux. I tried both new and old symbology, but have not yet tried only point, line or polygon one at a time yet.

Here's a link to an easy to use simple dataset and example pdfs made on windows and linux.
http://blog.wildintellect.com/files/qgisbug/

I think this issue would be more minor if the SVG export was better, though I think fixing he pdf export might be more realistic. I am changing the Priority, for several Windows users I know this is a major deal breaker as it really impedes their ability to make quality maps without pdf as vector or svg that clips to extent and preserves scale.

without pdf as vector

Have you tried printing to a virtual pdf "printer"? That produces vector output for me now...

svg that clips to extent and preserves scale

Scale should be preserved now - see #3224

Is clip-to-extent necessary simply to minimise file size? Personally I'm quite happy now with exporting to svg and then printing the svg to PDF. But of course it would be much better not having to do a two-step process...

Have you tried printing to a virtual pdf "printer"? That produces vector output for me now...

Sorry, no, I'm wrong. It doesn't anymore - printing rasterizes everything. So my original description for this bug is accurate again.

have not yet tried only point, line or polygon one at a time yet

I've tried that, but only with new symbology. It is always rasterised.

Ah. But it is affected by other things on the layoout e.g. if an arrow overlaps the map then part of the map is rasterised. If a basic shape overlaps the map then the whole map is rasterised.
Also svg images are partly rasterised (I guess it depends on the layers inside the svg).
See attached example.

Sorry, no. It is more complicated than that.

If a basic shape overlaps the map then the whole map is rasterised.

No, this isn't correct - see document2.pdf

Also svg images are partly rasterised (I guess it depends on the layers inside the svg).

I see this wasn't demonstrated in document1.pdf - more of the svg was rasterised than I expected (I guess due to the svg being in line with the basic shape or something). See document2.pdf instead.

I don't think I'm achieving anything here ;)

This should possibly be marked as duplicate of #3480

Also IIRC there is a bug where map labels cause any vector layers they overlap to be rasterised (or partly rasterised).

Replying to [comment:6 Alister]:

without pdf as vector

Have you tried printing to a virtual pdf "printer"? That produces vector output for me now...

I will double check but the last time I did so to PDF Creator it was still rasterized.

svg that clips to extent and preserves scale

Scale should be preserved now - see #3224

Is clip-to-extent necessary simply to minimise file size? Personally I'm quite happy now with exporting to svg and then printing the svg to PDF. But of course it would be much better not having to do a two-step process...

1. it's a lot of work to manually hide lines that cross the neatline of the map (maps are not always full page)
2. not necessarily file size but the related number of vectors/nodes has a huge impact on the behavior and stability of Inkscape and Illustrator. We found that using Natural Earth data if you only wanted to export 1-3 countries as part of your map SVG would leave you with 90% of the world as extra data. One could clip everything in QGIS before export but that seems to defeat the purpose of the map composer (however it is a suggested workaround.

I need to go back and check more about Labelling since we also need labels to come out as Text objects in both SVG and PDF unless a user explicity chooses to convert text to paths. Either way it should never be rasterized.

I need to go back and check more about Labelling since we also need labels to come out as Text objects in both SVG and PDF unless a user explicity chooses to convert text to paths. Either way it should never be rasterized.

"new" labelling is always rasterized - this is not a glitch, but the way it is designed. I'm pretty sure there is a ticket requesting it to be output as text, but I can't find it in a hurry.

Does anyone still have a problem with this, or can we close the ticket?
On current trunk I only have a problem when using the map book function of the easy print plugin:
http://code.google.com/p/cataisrepository/issues/detail?id=6

Not sure if it's the same problem. But I can't get layers with the line pattern fill to render as vector when I export to pdf. Anybody else experience the same issue? Both master and 1.8 is affected for me on Win XP.

Alister Hood wrote:

Does anyone still have a problem with this, or can we close the ticket?
On current trunk I only have a problem when using the map book function of the easy print plugin:
http://code.google.com/p/cataisrepository/issues/detail?id=6

Victor, I have exactly the same problem: line fills are rasterized when exporting to pdf.
I tried exporting to other vector format (pdf, svg, eps), I also tried using an external pdf printer but had no luck.
Any idea?
I'm using QGIS 1.8.0 on Win XP.

Guess the problem is not really a bug as the line pattern fill seems to be implemented to create a raster fill. The function creates a texture with lines to be used as a Qt::TexturePattern custom brush. I'm not sure, but I guess it's not possible to get a vector line pattern fill with the current implementation then.

the line pattern fill seems to be implemented to create a raster fill

Then that is a bug.

See discussion at #3430 and https://github.com/qgis/Quantum-GIS/pull/210

As Marco said: "Qt brush styles aren't suitable for printouts because they can't be scaled".
I guess it might make sense to close this ticket and open a new one about the line pattern file.

Hmm, you are right. That don't seem to be the intention then
There is already a ticket for the problem #6996

Alister Hood wrote:

the line pattern fill seems to be implemented to create a raster fill

Then that is a bug.

See discussion at #3430 and https://github.com/qgis/Quantum-GIS/pull/210

As Marco said: "Qt brush styles aren't suitable for printouts because they can't be scaled".
I guess it might make sense to close this ticket and open a new one about the line pattern file.