Output

The Output library is used to create graphical output to devices, such as printers and plotters, and graphical file formats such as Portable Document Format (PDF) and Tagged Image File Format (TIFF).

The developer uses other objects in the ArcGIS system to generate drawing commands, and uses the Output objects to convert those commands into graphical output. Drawing instructions are typically generated by objects in the Display and Carto libraries.

Developers can extend the Output library for custom devices and export formats.

The printer objects provide access to the ArcGIS printer engines. Each printer engine processes drawing instructions into a format that can be rendered on a print device. Several of the objects in the Printer subsystem are helper objects, designed to provide information and control for items, such as PostScript fonts and printer paper.

The Export objects provide access to the graphical file export drivers. These objects expose properties and methods that control resolution, bit-depth, compression options, and so on.

The image export objects render drawing commands into a bitmap that can be persisted into one of five different raster image file formats: .bmp, .jpeg, .png, .tiff, or .gif. If the drawing commands are generated by a map object, the IWorldFileSettings interface allows you to output the image coordinates and transform to a world file.

For rasters smaller than 8 MB, the export object reads a device independent bitmap from memory, converting it to the target image format. For cases where bitmap size is larger than 8 MB, the bitmap is exported to a temporary Enhanced Metafile (EMF), which is subsequently parsed and rendered to the target image format. You can override this size threshold by creating the HKCU/Software/ESRI/Output registry key and adding a esriExportRasterBufferSizeMB DWORD value.

The vector export objects translate ArcGIS native drawing commands into one of five vector graphic file formats: .emf, EPS, .ai, .pdf, or .svg. The objects expose properties and methods that control items, such as font embedding, inserted image resolution and downsampling, and several format specific items.