Hello,

So, I made some documents with Inkscape, which include many layers and vector objects. I converted them to PDF once finished, but I guess the objects persist in PDF form. Because of this, it takes the printer a while (about 30 seconds) to prepare each page for printing.

Is there way I can simplify the file so that the printer doesn't have to analyze for so long? Would converting the file to an image with really high resolution should be sufficient, and how would I do this?

To be clear, I'm not talking about the actual time printing ink. But if I want to print two pages, there would be 30 seconds of downtime between each print.

Thanks!

Well, A'll assume that a printer needs to make your objects into some kind of raw data so the printer can understand where to move the printer head.
If reduced details is not a way to go, the only possible solution I can think of is to get a faster printer (faster in terms of internal decoding time)

Printers are bitmap devices, in that they print individual dots to the page to construct the final image. So any vector data that needs to be printed must first be converted into a bitmap of some sort. With an expensive Postscript printer this may happen in the printer itself, but for most printers it's the responsibility of the printer driver on the PC to do the conversion. As PDFs exported from Inkscape are likely to still contain vector data, the delay is probably due to the driver doing this conversion. Therefore a faster PC might do the conversion more rapidly, but it's hardly a practical answer.

Exporting to a bitmap of the right resolution for your printer might allow the driver to handle it more quickly - but you're just moving the conversion step from the driver to Inkscape instead, so the total time to print one page could be similar or perhaps even worse. If you want to print the same image multiple times then there might be some time benefit to doing it this way, though. Another advantage of this approach is that some advances SVG features, such as complex filters, cause problems for PDFs, but can be exported to bitmaps by Inkscape.

If you do try this approach, choose your DPI to either match the printers native resolution, or be some multiple of it. E.g. for a 300dpi printer (which is a typical value), export at 150dpi, 300dpi or 600dpi depending on the quality you want. Using direct multiples might mean that the driver can use a simpler code path to convert the image for the printer (though it will depend on how well the driver has been written). Going higher than 300dpi might seem pointless if that's all your printer can manage, but give it a try as it can sometimes give better results from the conversion (again, depending on the driver).