Hi,

I miss in your list: 3) write a own postscript to svg importer linked in the inkscape source

this is some similar to your #2 but the code is not a script but linked into inkscape. If you write in ruby that is not linked to inkscape I see some problems on systems where ruby is not installed ...

Anyway I like the idea of direct import ps (and pdf ;-))

HTH,

Adib.

MenTaLguY schrieb:

I've been examining our options for importing postscript without requiring a bajillion evil dependencies, and I think I've arrived at a plan.

1. write a postscript to SVG converter in Postscript and use that for

our Postscript importer

2. write a bare-bones standalone Postscript interpreter (doesn't need to

implement any rendering, just provide a dummy postscipt device) and ship it with Inkscape

Until #2 is finished, we can run the converter using Ghostscript, which is still two fewer dependencies than before.

I've got prototypes for both #1 and #2 in CVS in the module 'ps3convert'.

The prototype interpreter is written in Ruby and isn't really functional yet, but the converter (currently encapsulated in the ps-svg shell script) already works for the basic stuff.

Running the converter:

./ps-svg blah.ps > blah.svg

Caveats with the converter:

• it's a proof-of-concept; hence the code is horribly ugly

• it doesn't yet do text, gradients or clipping paths

• the image in the output SVG appears above the top of the page, so you

have to scroll up to see it

Also one last caveat: I'm not promising any timetables on this stuff. So don't bug me to finish it. You'll probably find giving me patches to be the more productive alternative.

-mental