[OS X TeX] Re: svg to pdf

[Alain Schremmer]

Ross Moore wrote:

> Hi Alain,
>
> On 08/07/2006, at 5:38 AM, Alain Schremmer wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>>
>> A while back, Ross Moore suggested on the "TeX on Mac OS X"  Mailing, 
>> instead of keeping both a svg and a pdf version of each  graphic 
>> along with the LaTeX file, to include, say
>> \begin{filecontents*}{mypicture.svg}
>> <?xml version="1.0" standalone="no"?><!DOCTYPE svg PUBLIC "-//W3C// 
>> DTD SVG 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/1.1/DTD/ 
>> svg11.dtd"><!--Generated by Intaglio, www.PurgatoryDesign.com-- ><svg 
>> viewBox="0,0,576,734" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"  
>> version="1.1"><path fill="#fff" stroke="#000" d="M201,196 L422,196  
>> L422,290 L201,290 Z"></path></svg>
>> \end{filecontents*}
>> in the preamble and then have
>>  \begin{figure}
>>  \centering
>>   \immediate\write18{svg2pdf mypicture.svg  mypicture.pdf}%
>>   \includegraphics{mypicture.pdf}
>>  \end{figure}
>> in the document body.
>>
>> When I did, I got of course the error message:
>> LaTeX Warning: Writing file `./mypicture.svg'.
>>
>> (./TestForSVG.aux)
>> (/usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.tetex/tex/context/base/supp-pdf.tex
>> (/usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.tetex/tex/context/base/supp-mis.tex
>> loading : Context Support Macros / Missing
>> )
>> loading : Context Support Macros / PDF
>> )sh: line 1: svg2pdf: command not found
>>
>> LaTeX Warning: File `mypicture.pdf' not found on input line 358.
>>
>> Error: /usr/local/teTeX/bin/powerpc-apple-darwin-current/pdflatex  
>> (file mypictu
>> re.pdf): cannot find image file
>>  ==> Fatal error occurred, the output PDF file is not finished!
>> which, since mypicture.svg was in fact created, seemed to say that,  
>> indeed, the only thing missing was svg2pdf which, unfortunately,  
>> being a Terminal-moron, I knew I couldn't install.
>>
>> However, last night, a professional system engineer friend of mine  
>> tried but failed to compile svg2pdf. He said XCode claimed some  
>> library was missing and when he downloaded it, that it was not in  
>> the right language.
>>
>> I would much appreciate any help you could give me as the solution  
>> suggested by Moore would seem to be rather an elegant one.
>
>
> I've spent several hours last Saturday trawling the web for
> SVG-->PDF converters. 

So have I and, from what I have seen, so have many others, and all, it 
seems to no avail. At least as far as OS X is concerned. The situation 
is a bit incredible.

> There are several that claim to do it,
> but most simply put a wrapper around a bitmap, at some fixed
> resolution.
>
> What we really want is a conversion that retains the
> "vector graphics" character of the resulting PDF file.
> For this, the natural expectation is that such a converter
> would come from Adobe, or use Ghostscript, since it must
> generate (a flavour of) raw PostScript coding, suitably
> wrapped (distilled ?) for PDF.
>
> Adobe's Illustrator CS certainly opens SVG images, which
> can then be resaved as PDF.

Intaglio can open and save in svg and (cropped) pdf.
 
Interestingly, Intaglio can open pdf files into its own vector graphics 
format.

> Can this be automated using scripts and Apple events?

Intaglio is Applescriptable. (But, of course, not by me as not only am I 
a Terminal-moron, I am a programming moron in general. The best I can do 
is write pidgin latex.)

> Here's what Ghostscript documentation says about the
> possibility of having an SVG interpreter.
>
>
>   ** SVG (XML Structured Vector Graphics) interpreter. **
>
>   Ghostscript could be adapted with some work to read SVG.  This  
> would be an
>   interesting and challenging project because SVG's graphics model  would
>   require extending the library (see above).
>   "If SVG turns out to be an important standard, it is important that
>   there be a good free implementation of it."
>
> Quite. That message was formulated 4-5 years ago, I think.
>
>
> In fact there is a "free"  svg2pdf  converter that preserves the VG
> nature of the converted image. You can use it online here:
>     http://me.in-berlin.de/~darwin/svg/svg2pdf.html
> To compile this as a command-line tools requires Python, svglib
> and something called "ReportLab ToolKit"; viz,
>    (from  http://www.python.net/~gherman/svglib.html)
>
>   svglib  is an extension module for the Open Source RLTK,
>    the ReportLab ToolKit and provides SVG reading and reusing
>    capabilities to a reasonable degree. As a module it reads
>    existing SVG files and returns them converted to ReportLab
>    Drawing objects that can be used in a variety of contexts,
>    like in RML2PDF, Platypus or PythonPoint. As a command-line
>    tool it converts SVG files into PDF ones.
>
>
> There is another converter, using  Cairo .
> Source coding (by Carl Worth ?) can be found at several places:
>
>   http://www.freshports.org/graphics/svg2pdf
>   http://webcvs.freedesktop.org/cairo/svg2pdf/
>   http://www.freebsdsoftware.org/graphics/svg2pdf.html
>
> I've not examined these repositories or the build procedure,
> to see how much of Cairo is actually needed, or whether
> it works on MacOS X  --- expect so, as there is a macosx
> directory at these repositories.
>
>
>
> Also, there is this that looks promising:
>   http://www.planetpdf.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=625
> but the links do not lead any to any satisfaction.
>
>
>>
>> Best regards
>> --Schremmer
>
>
> I hope this helps someone to produce a good converter for SVG,
> which certainly would be nice to have.

I second that.

Best regards
--schremmer
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