PDF Export (Cairo) stress testing
Hi all,
first I need to say that the Cairo PDF export is A W E S O M E !!! (now prepare for some nagging... ;)
For some weeks I was working on a bigger project (0.5 x 3 in meters ;) and it was quite an adventure to print it out... Inkscape 0.44 export didn't work for me, as I wanted pictures and transparency. So I compiled rev. 17189 from SVN on gentoo. (Sa, 26 Jan 2008)
To verify, use the SVGs in http://home.arcor.de/caliga/timeline.zip
Exporting without text-to-curves the result is: - Console: (inkscape:5847): WARNING **: Parameter <blurToBitmap> might not exists 9354,330078 1275,590576 - PDF-Output: about 1kb in size, therefore not completed...
one time I got: (inkscape:5847): CRITICAL **: SPObject* sp_object_unref(SPObject*, SPObject*): assertion `object != NULL' failed
Exporting with text-to-path: Well, today I could not reproduce it, but after a long time of swapping I saw messages similar to "Warning! Allocating large amount of memory. Possible memory leak." today it just said "Killed" after swapping arround for a while. (unfortunately I had to this on my old 512mb machine as my Laptop broke...)
I actually got a working PDF from the smaller version (Zeitstrahl 18.svg). Hey, I thought this is just vectors? How does size matter? Well, I suspect that the "preferred DPI" option plays a part here.
However, I needed the xxl version, with a lots of DPI ;). So I went to my friend with the big (!) printer (plotter) and installed Inkscape 0.46-pre0 (win). Direct printing didn't work, so we tried to create a PDF there. Without text-to-path we got an error message. With text-to-path it worked for "Zeitstrahl 19 xxl single.svg", but not for the double version. I think we had set "preferred DPI" to 150. However, later my friend told me that he *could* create a PDF from the double version...
Summary: Well... if you please, it would be nice if Inkscape could create a Cairo-PDF from Files like "Zeitstrahl 19 xxl double.svg" with any combination of options set, on a 500MB machine, in no time ;)
Thanks :) Daniel
P.S.: Another way of stressing Inkscape quite a bit (at least with 500MB RAM), is to select all objects of one timeline (in xxl double) and trying to group them. (Didn't work for me...)
Daniel Stiefelmaier wrote:
Exporting with text-to-path: Well, today I could not reproduce it, but after a long time of swapping I saw messages similar to "Warning! Allocating large amount of memory. Possible memory leak." today it just said "Killed" after swapping arround for a while. (unfortunately I had to this on my old 512mb machine as my Laptop broke...)
I actually got a working PDF from the smaller version (Zeitstrahl 18.svg). Hey, I thought this is just vectors? How does size matter? Well, I suspect that the "preferred DPI" option plays a part here.
It sounds like you are using cairo 1.4.x. The cairo pdf surface will embed a fallback raster image for drawing operations it is unable to generate vector PDF for. Cairo 1.4.x only supported a limited number of vector operations. The fallback image code did not have the capability to create the smallest image required to draw unsupported operations so instead it embedded an image the size of the page.
This has all been fixed in the cairo 1.5.x development snapshots and will soon be released as cairo 1.6.
I converted Zeitstrahl 18.svg to PDF using cairo 1.4.10 (text to paths and blur effects to bitmaps switched off). It took about 15 minutes due to the swapping and created an 11MB PDF containing one embedded image.
Testing with the latest cairo from git (the 1.5.8 snapshot should give the same results) it took about 2 seconds and created a 1.8MB vector PDF.
Well... if you please, it would be nice if Inkscape could create a Cairo-PDF from Files like "Zeitstrahl 19 xxl double.svg" with any combination of options set, on a 500MB machine, in no time ;)
It took about 10 seconds to convert this using the latest cairo from git.
participants (2)
-
Adrian Johnson -
Daniel Stiefelmaier