On 16/01/2013 21:37, Valerio Aimale wrote:
On 1/16/13 10:36 AM, ~suv wrote:
On 16/01/2013 16:56, ~suv wrote:
On 15/01/2013 18:17, Valerio Aimale wrote:
- bunch of improvements and changes in the build system
- Since you seem to be a real wizard with regard to creating osx app
packages: How difficult do you think would it be to include a minimal ghostscript installation in the application bundle, with 'gs' itself in 'Resources/bin'? As far as I know this is still a big obstacle for many Mac users who want to open / edit PostScript files in Inkscape.
Sorry, correcting an obvious mistake: the dependency for PS/EPS input is of course 'ps2pdf' not 'gs' itself...
Thanks, I've also become a gtk2 wizard to integrate inkscape into Mac OS X ...
Indeed :)
dunno if you noticed .......... :-)
Yes, I did. Sorry if I missed to adequately express the dept of gratitude the Inkscape project and all Inkscape users on Macs out there owe you! Your efforts to push out a renewed OS X package is highly appreciated and certainly eagerly awaited - even if the number of testers providing feedback here on the list has been relatively small.
There are several scripts with the name psXXpdf
ps2pdf is a script that is part of gs. You were correct, if we want to bundle ps2pdf, we would carry over gs as well.
That's the one that is required by Inkscape: ps2pdf from Ghostscript (See also http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/File-Import.html)
pstopdf part of a (name your favorite) texmf distribution (I think it's a ruby script)
pstopdf, installed in Mac OSX as '/usr/bin/pstopdf' is proprietary, possible closed source, Apple software.
To make things interesting, I will thrown in the hat pstoedit. In my TeX/LateX/METAFONT/METAPOST heydays (those were good days) I figured that pstoedit was the best in converting ps/eps to editable format. Far superior to gs and ruby script. Maybe we could write an svg exporter/backend for it? the author of pstoedit (all opensource) has a shareware svg exporter
Or would /usr/bin/pstopdf be good enough?
In my opinion it would be best to use the same helper applications in all ports of Inkscape (i.e. to _not_ modify bundled default input extension scripts specifically for the Mac OS X package), so that the results are -within limits- predictably the same whether one imports other supported file formats on Linux, OS X or Windows. For PostScript support, this means that Inkscape currently relies on ps2pdf from Ghostscript (on all platforms).
In the few rather random tests I had done [1], the results of using ps2pdf or Apple's pstopdf as helper application tended to vary in structure (always) as well as in appearance (sometimes), depending on the content of the original PS/EPS file. Occasionally pstoedit may fail where ps2pdf from Ghostscript still produces a readable PDF file, but I do recall instances where the opposite was true.
The Inkscape Windows installer package currently relies on PostScript being installed externally, which - based on the number of recurring questions about it - poses for many Windows users similar obstacles as for Mac users right now (despite the fact that for Windows there are at least up-to-date Ghostscript installer packages available for download from ghostscript.com, unlike for Mac OS X).
----- [1] If interested in doing more extensive comparisons, here are two (work-in-progress) custom PostScript input extensions I recently started to work on: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~suv-lp/+junk/inkscape-extensions/files/head:/postscript-input/ They are based on those included with inkscape, use the identical settings of the official extensions on first tab, and have experimental options based on 'gs' on the next two tabs. On the 'Unsupported' tab, one can use 'pstoedit' instead (on OS X).
(Please ignore the terrible layout of the extension dialog if used with Inkscape 0.48.x - it is developed with current trunk which has a more compact layout of the widgets for INX-based dialogs.)