Current PDF Support

Current PDF support

PDF Import

There is currently no support to automatically import PDF files in Inkscape.

Use of Gnulibplot

A short way for converting files to import in Inkscape is to use gsview and the command "edit/convert to vector format" to convert any pdf to svg. Easy and fast to use. Incidentally, gsview invokes a command similar to "pstoedit -f plot-svg input-file output-file" and, after downloading and installing pstoedit, this command can be run on the command line without opening gsview.

PDF Export

PDF export is now supported by main porgram, using cairo backend (choose Cairo PDF it in the save as file requester).

Before there was the need from external program : pdf_output.inx exports PDF files by first saving them as Postscript and use an external converter to creat PDFs, requiring ps2pdf (Installed separately, included in ghostscript)

Strengths: Depend of Cairo version.

Weaknesses: Depend of Cairo version.

Current Postscript support

PS Import

ps_input.inx imports Postscript files by using two external conversion scripts:

Requirements:

• pstoedit (Installed separately), this tool need a sharware plugin to support SVG.
• skconvert (Installed separately)

Strengths:

Weaknesses:

PS Export

Inkscape has built-in support to write Postscript files.

Strengths:

• Outputs nice readable Postscript

Weaknesses:

• Doesn't support fill patterns and clipping, see bugs 1208874 and 1170322
• Postscript doesn't support transparency and Inkscape doesn't emulate this, so they are just ignored, that is you get the color you would get with opacity:1

Current Adobe Illustrator support

The files used by AdobeIllustrator were earlier postscript files but are now Pdf files.

AI Import

Requirements:

• ill2svg.pl requires perl

Strengths:

Weaknesses:

• Only works on the old Postscript-based Adobe format
• Code is sort of a hack
• No maintainer exists for this code

AI Export

ai_output.inx exports Illustrator files by first saving them as Postscript and use an external converter to creat AIs.

Requirements:

• ps2ai.ps (requires gs)

Strengths:

Weaknesses: