Q: Can I use PDFTron PDFNet to programmatically convert PDF text to
outlines? If so, how would this be done?
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A: You can use PDFNet SDK (http://www.pdftron.com/pdfnet/) to
implement the required functionality.
As a starting point you may want to take a look at ElementEdit sample
(http://www.pdftron.com/pdfnet/samplecode.html#ElementEdit). The
sample removes images and chnages text color, but in your case you
would pass through all elements except for text runs which you would
replace with glyph outlines.
To obtain the glyph outline given a char code (see ElementReaderAdv
for relevant sample code) use
element.GetGState().GetFont().GetGlyphPaths(). There is some
trickiness to get the right scale and positioning for the font
outlines (which are influenced by CTM, text matrix, and font size).
You would use ElementBuilder to create a path element from the outline
(using MoveTo(), LineTo(), CurveTo(), etc) and would write a path
element for each charcode in the run.