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Re: Images & PDF output
On Thu, Jun 08, 2000 at 10:16:55PM +0100, Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
> Nik Clayton writes:
> > moment. Because we're a free software project we need to use freely
> > available software, so that rules out any commercial offerings.
>
> PDF is a good format. I know Adobe own it, but the format is
> published, and there are several free renderers. do you rule that out?
PDF as a vector format or as a bitmap format?
And could Adobe ever pull a Unisys and try and extract license fees for
it?
Personally, I'm more comfortable using something like PNG as the master
(bitmap) format, and then converting to other formats as necessary.
> > We've pretty much settled on using PNG for the raster format (none of
> > the licensing issues that GIF has), and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics)
> > for the vector format.
> >
> > Anyone got any opinions pro/anti- these?
>
> I think SVG is potentially great, but isn't a bit premature to rely on
> it?
The other choice in the running for vector graphics was EPS. But I don't
know of any free packages that can use EPS as a native format, and retain
additional information about the diagram (like grouping of different
elements).
SVG has the advantage of being XML based (for what that's worth).
> Isn't it still a draft spec? are there are 100% implementations?
> Can you show me a foolproof command-line SVG to EPS converter for use
> with older bits of software which are unlikely to change (eg dvips)?
Sketch (http://sketch.sourceforge.net/) is a CorelDraw-a-like, written
in Python/Tk. It's native format is not SVG, but it can read and write
SVG files. It also comes with a commandline converter that will do the
SVG to EPS conversion.
dia (http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia/) is more like Visio. It can't
read SVG files (yet) but it can export them.
N
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