File types

We need EPS, Adobe SVG, and PDF in/out support. We really need to import/export the following formats:

• EPS
• PDF
• Adobe SVG (must be interoperable!)
• Postscript
• Adobe Illustrator File Formats (Newer ones are PDF 1.4 documents)

To really be considered a successful application, we must take these file formats in and be able to save them out.

Other useful formats might be:

• Enhanced Windows Metafile (emf)
• Windows Metafile (wmf) (there are a lot of clipart packages in this format)
• Computer Graphics Metafile (cgm)
• HP-GL2 (plt)
• Embroidery file formats (Ksm, Melco, PCS, PES, Tajima,...) ???
• CorelDRAW files (cdr). Their UI is quite similar to Inkscape's (owing to inspiration of both by Xara's ancient Artworks for the Acorn Archimedes); it suggests a path of least resistance for those seeking to convert.
• The newer Macromedia Freehand formats: .fh9, .fh10, and .fh11 (by file extension in Windows). At least the ability to read basic vectors, fill color, and stroke width (while possibly ignoring page layout for compatibility). Versions older than Freehand 8 might also be useful to revive those ancient drawings one made using the original Apple Macintoshes (prior to His Steveness' firing and subsequent rehiring).

Converter Status

Please check [1] and [2]

Inkscape export feature matrix

Test	Inkscape	PDF native	PDF cairo	PS native	PS cairo	emf
Stroke and Fill
shapes-ellipse-01-t	ok		ok		crash	ok
shapes-ellipse-02-t	ok		ok		crash
Markers
Text
text-align-01-b	ok		ok		crash	ok
SVG Filter
basic-filters-gauss-01-b	ok		fail		crash

Existing Conversion Tools

Scripts and other applications that provide conversions, and might be useful to investigate as solutions to this dilemma.

• pdf2svg (broken link)
• PS to other formats page (link broken)
• Cenon has importers/exporters and source to match
• EPD to SVG
• SVG to SWF - for Flash
• font to SVG
• libsvgtoswf - Another Flash converter
• SGI Irix FTI vector icons to SVG
• Graphviz - popular text format for describing graphs. Can export SVG.
• pstoedit - converts Postscript into SVG (and other editable formats)
• PStill converts Postscript into PDF
• ps2svg.ps converts Postscript into SVG (free) (broken link)
• hp2xx converts HPGL files into various formats, including SVG
• UniConvertor convert CDR-family, AI,PS, EPS, WMF, CGM, SVG to AI, WMF, CGM, SVG
• Scribus EPS to SVG (at least)

OpenOffice OODraw-to-SVG

OpenOffice can export and import SVG, but they do not always work.

For the SVG import in Open Office, do not use the import-from-file function. Instead, open the SVG, and copy it to your document.

Possibly a filter could be created for Inkscape from their code, to enable at least being able to load OODraw's SXD file format into Inkscape.

Browsing through OO's sourcecode, this appears to be the parts that do the SVG writing:

OpenOffice/filter/source/svg

SOTranscoder.java  svgfilter.cxx      svgimport.cxx  svgwriter.hxx
exports.map        svgfilter.hxx      svgscript.hxx
makefile.mk        svgfontexport.cxx  svguno.cxx
svgexport.cxx      svgfontexport.hxx  svgwriter.cxx

You can download the OpenOffice sourcecode from one of the OpenOffice mirrors. E.g.:

http://www.mirror.ac.uk/downloads/sunsite.dk/openoffice/contrib/rc/1.1.4rc/OOo_1.1.4rc_source.tar.gz

There is a webpage with some info about a new SVG exporter, here:

http://graphics.openoffice.org/svg/svg.htm

This includes a java sample test, that could perhaps be used as a starting point for a filter...

http://graphics.openoffice.org/svg/SVGExportTest.java

Perhaps that could be recast into C++ so that a compiled filter could be made of it.

The page also includes a binary svgexport.so package. Perhaps if this is fairly stand-alone, a filter program could be written in C++ based on the above java testcode that links against svgexport.so and provides its functionality on the commandline as a sxd2svg tool.

nm reports that it provides the following functions:

00005f9c T component_getFactory
00005d28 T component_getImplementationEnvironment
00005d44 T component_writeInfo

ldd reports that this .so has the following dependency requirements:

      linux-gate.so.1 =>  (0xffffe000)
       libsvx645li.so => not found
       libxo645li.so => not found
       libgo645li.so => not found
       libj645li_g.so => not found
       libvcl645li.so => not found
       libutl645li.so => not found
       libtl645li.so => not found
       libcomphelp3gcc3.so => not found
       libcppuhelpergcc3.so.3 => not found
       libcppu.so.3 => not found
       libsal.so.3 => not found
       libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x4003d000)
       libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x40040000)
       libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x40091000)
       libstlport_gcc.so => not found
       libstdc++.so.5 => /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i686-pc-linux-gnu/3.3.4/libstdc++.so.5 (0x400b4000)
       libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x4017d000)
       /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x80000000)
       libgcc_s.so.1 => /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i686-pc-linux-gnu/3.3.4/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x40291000)

Other Conversion Tools

When doing prepress work, its better to convert from ps to pdf on the commandline. there are several options available that make the result better fit the job, this is an example ps2pdf command:

       ps2pdf12 -dProcessColorModel=/DeviceCMYK -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress
               -dUseFlateCompression=true
               -dColorConversionStrategy=/UseDeviceDependentColor
               -dDownsampleColorImages=false
               -dDownsampleGrayImages=false
               -dDownsampleMonoImages=false
               -dAutoFilterColorImages=false
               -dAutoFilterGrayImages=false
               -dColorImageFilter=/FlateEncode
               -dGrayImageFilter=/FlateEncode
               -dMonoImageFilter=/FlateEncode
               input.ps output.pdf

PSStill example: convert a grayscale 25x70 cm inkscape exported postscript file to pdf:

       pstill -i -2 -c -c -c -c -t -B -w 708,66 -h 1984,25 -o output.pdf input.ps