EDIT: I guess I’d use qGIS python bindings: http://www.qgis.org/wiki/Python_Bindings That’s the easiest way I can think of. I remember hand rolling something before, but it’s ugly. qGIS would be easier, even if you had to make a separate Windows installation (to get python to work with it) then set up an XML-RPC server to run … Read more
I had a similar issue, and solved it using ImageMagics convert tool (http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php). That comes with linux and runs fine on Windows/Cygwin or OS X convert -density 300 largeVectorFileFromR.pdf out.pdf With -density 300 you control resolution (as DPI). Downside: Text is rasterized as well, I understand that Michael does not want this.
I’m one of the rendering software architects at a large VFX and animated feature studio with a proprietary renderer (not Pixar, though I was once the rendering software architect there as well, long, long ago). Almost all high-quality rendering for film (at all the big studios, with all the major renderers) is CPU only. There … Read more
In WWDC 2012 Polishing Your Interface Rotations video (sadly, no longer available online) they talked about the advantages and implications of rasterizing layers. Bottom line if you have a complex view (i.e. relatively expensive to re-render) that you are animating, but for which the animated view is not itself changing, rasterizing the layer can improve … Read more