File types

2007-11-18T16:24:39Z

Alberto: /* Existing Conversion Tools */ : Some links are broken.

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)
* [http://lprng.sourceforge.net/DISTRIB/RESOURCES/HPGL_short_summary.html HP-GL2 ](plt)
* Embroidery file formats (Ksm, Melco, PCS, PES, Tajima,...) to export drawings on textiles. Lot of clips arts are already available in embroidery file formats. Some specifications are available on file formats dedicated web sites.
* 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).

== Existing Conversion Tools ==

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

* [http://www.solidcode.net/pdf2svg/ pdf2svg] (broken link)
* [http://jeff.cs.mcgill.ca/~luc/PSto.html PS to other formats page] (link broken)
* [http://www.cenon.info/frame_gb.html Cenon has importers/exporters and source to match]
* [http://freshmeat.net/projects/epd2svg/ EPD to SVG]
* [http://freshmeat.net/projects/svg2swf/ SVG to SWF] - for Flash
* [http://freshmeat.net/projects/font2svg/ font to SVG]
* [http://freshmeat.net/projects/libsvgtoswf/ libsvgtoswf] - Another Flash converter
* [http://freshmeat.net/projects/fti2svg.pl/ SGI Irix FTI vector icons to SVG]
* [http://www.graphviz.org/ Graphviz] - popular text format for describing graphs. Can export SVG.
* [http://www.pstoedit.net/pstoedit pstoedit] - converts Postscript into SVG (and other editablke formats
* [http://www.wizards.de/~frank/pstill.html PStill] converts Postscript into PDF
* [http://homepage.ntlworld.com/r.inglis/PH/Rshi/svg/ ps2svg.ps] converts Postscript into SVG (free) (broken link)
* [http://www.gnu.org/software/hp2xx/ hp2xx] converts HPGL files into various formats, including SVG

== OpenOffice OODraw-to-SVG ==

OpenOffice can export '''to''' SVG, and import SVG using the following plug-in

http://www.ipd.uni-karlsruhe.de/~hauma/svg-import/

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.

Workaround to use SVG-files created with Inkscape in Openoffice.org.
Download Skencil from www.skencil.org (formely sketch). It's a
vector drawing application written in Python. It can import SVG
and save as Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM). You can use the skconvert
commandline utility to batchconvert a number of files. Openoffice is
able to import CGM. Not all object types are supported and you might
get wrong colors, but the path look ok. I wrote a small article about
this: http://www.tokonoma.de/software/svg_to_ooo/svg_to_ooo.html

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

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