PDF Export on mousePressed?

Core Library Questions

jeffgdavis

in Core Library Questions • 7 months ago

Hi, I'm new to Processing and programing in general. My apologies if this has been addressed elsewhere, but I couldn't find what I needed in the reference or other forums. I have a basic program that is structured like this:

void setup () {
// set size/background
}
void draw () {
// draw random shapes
noLoop ();
}
void mousePressed() {
saveFrame ("rs-###.jpg");
}
void keyPressed() {
setup();
redraw();
}

The idea is that the program draws a set of random shapes. If I press a key on the keyboard, it resets and draws a new set of random shapes. If I get something I like, I click the mouse and it saves a JPEG.

What I'd like to do now is get a PDF in place of a JPEG when I click the mouse. But all I can figure out is this:

import processing.pdf.*;
void setup () {
// set size/background
beginRecord(PDF, "rs-###.pdf");
}
void draw () {
// draw random shapes
noLoop ();
endRecord();
}
void mousePressed() {
saveFrame ("rs-###.jpg");
}
void keyPressed() {
setup();
redraw();
}

which saves a PDF every time the draw function is run. The problem is that I only want to save a PDF after I see what the draw function does (and would like to trigger the save with mousePressed), but it seems that I need to start recording before the draw function even runs to capture the results. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Jeff

Replies(2)

PhiLho

Re: PDF Export on mousePressed?

7 months ago

" it seems that I need to start recording before the draw function even runs to capture the results"
Exactly. Or, more accurately, you need to record before starting the drawing operations that must be recorded.
"recorded" is the keyword, here: the PDF doesn't save a state of the drawing, like save() does, it records the drawing orders to be able to replay them.
So you need to always record the drawings even if you finally discard them.

jeffgdavis

Re: PDF Export on mousePressed?

7 months ago

Thanks. My non-elegant solution was to remove the ### from the PDF file name, so that each time setup is called, it overwrites the previous PDF. Then if I have a draw cycle I want to keep, I simply rename the PDF so that it doesn't get overwritten.

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