PDF Support in Inkscape
Hi all,
I've been noticing a LOT of requests for PDF/PS support in Inkscape. Either export or import or both.
I'm fairly certain that this is the #1 top feature need for Inkscape right now.
Over the past year or so, I've been fishing around for a volunteer to implement this. But unfortunately I'm coming up dry. Ain't no one I can find with an itch to implement this, not on a volunteer basis anyway.
However, there are a TON of users with this need. Some of whom, I'm fairly certain, would be willing to pledge some money towards it. Maybe a little, maybe a lot, who knows.
I think if enough people pitched in funds, we could actually make this happen. This is one feature I think we as a community could just force through, by hiring some mercenary to attack and kill it for us, hardcore style.
Can you all tell me what you think? I really have no solid idea if enough people would be open to this plan. Are you a user that'd be willing to pledge $100 or more towards this? Are you a developer that'd be willing to commit to doing this work for some $k? Or do you have some ideas on how we could make this need get met? Please email me and let me know what you think.
Bryce
On 12/1/05, Bryce Harrington <bryce@...961...> wrote:
Over the past year or so, I've been fishing around for a volunteer to implement this. But unfortunately I'm coming up dry. Ain't no one I can find with an itch to implement this, not on a volunteer basis anyway.
What about the Uberconverter?
-- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org
Bryce,
Yes it is a fairly high need to have good pdf export. Right now I loose all my transparency on win32.
You think about the native implementation for pdf export? Does Cairo has pdf export already ? What about to use cairo for just this job ? and later then use cairo for the whole presentation layer ? Instead of creating an interims solution ?
HTH,
Adib.
-----Original Message----- From: inkscape-user-admin@lists.sourceforge.net on behalf of bulia byak Sent: Thu 12/1/2005 08:29 To: Bryce Harrington Cc: inkscape-devel@...6...; inkscape-user@...6...; Brandon C.S. Sanders Subject: [Inkscape-user] Re: [Inkscape-devel] PDF Support in Inkscape
On 12/1/05, Bryce Harrington <bryce@...961...> wrote:
Over the past year or so, I've been fishing around for a volunteer to implement this. But unfortunately I'm coming up dry. Ain't no one I can find with an itch to implement this, not on a volunteer basis anyway.
What about the Uberconverter?
-- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org
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Will there be a WoC (winter of code)? This could be an ideal project for master degree students and maybe make a great thesis - they could do: 1) research and summarize all pdf <-> svg issues 2) create a roadmap of priorities 3) analyze approaches (cairo, converter, ....) 4) implement 1 or more approaches
Maybe OSDL members, others can help create/sponsor more student internship projects ?
Taraben, Adib wrote:
Bryce,
Yes it is a fairly high need to have good pdf export. Right now I loose all my transparency on win32.
You think about the native implementation for pdf export? Does Cairo has pdf export already ? What about to use cairo for just this job ? and later then use cairo for the whole presentation layer ? Instead of creating an interims solution ?
HTH,
Adib.
-----Original Message----- From: inkscape-user-admin@lists.sourceforge.net on behalf of bulia byak Sent: Thu 12/1/2005 08:29 To: Bryce Harrington Cc: inkscape-devel@...6...; inkscape-user@...6...; Brandon C.S. Sanders Subject: [Inkscape-user] Re: [Inkscape-devel] PDF Support in Inkscape
On 12/1/05, Bryce Harrington <bryce@...961...> wrote:
Over the past year or so, I've been fishing around for a volunteer to implement this. But unfortunately I'm coming up dry. Ain't no one I can find with an itch to implement this, not on a volunteer basis anyway.
What about the Uberconverter?
-- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org
This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you grep through log files for problems? Stop! Download the new AJAX search engine that makes searching your log files as easy as surfing the web. DOWNLOAD SPLUNK! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_idv37&alloc_id http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_idv37&alloc_id865&op=ick _______________________________________________ Inkscape-user mailing list Inkscape-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-user
# from bulia byak # on Wednesday 30 November 2005 11:29 pm:
Over the past year or so, I've been fishing around for a volunteer to implement this. But unfortunately I'm coming up dry. Ain't no one I can find with an itch to implement this, not on a volunteer basis anyway.
What about the Uberconverter?
I'm currently working on the xar2crs program, and will be into svg2crs very soon. Then, of course crs2xar and crs2svg. If someone wanted to add crs2pdf and pdf2crs, that would be an awesome next step.
The xar format is really similar to pdf and ps in a lot of basic ways. There are (of course) a whole lot of differences too. Comparison:
http://scratchcomputing.com/projects/uber-converter/chromista_features.html
The plan for chromista (the svg,xar,pdf,ps hub) is to essentially design a random-access database in YAML format which can represent all of the xar entities, metadata, etc. So, if you want to create a ps/pdf from that, you just have to reach in and grab all of the data and turn it into a stream. Support for higher-level xar objects like quickshapes, morphs (blends), etc. will be much later, but the svg/pdf/ps connectors will probably need some common down-conversion at that point. This might be done via a "dumber" version of chromista (using a utility program to downconvert within the hub.)
If the inkscape group can come up with a volunteer or paid developer, I would be happy to help them work within the uber-converter framework. As for the current efforts, I'm hoping to have something workable within a few weeks.
I haven't been following this too closely, what's the preferred library for PDF?
--Eric
On Thu, Dec 01, 2005 at 09:18:41AM -0800, Eric Wilhelm wrote:
# from bulia byak # on Wednesday 30 November 2005 11:29 pm:
Over the past year or so, I've been fishing around for a volunteer to implement this. ?But unfortunately I'm coming up dry. ?Ain't no one I can find with an itch to implement this, not on a volunteer basis anyway.
What about the Uberconverter?
I'm currently working on the xar2crs program, and will be into svg2crs very soon. Then, of course crs2xar and crs2svg. If someone wanted to add crs2pdf and pdf2crs, that would be an awesome next step.
Agreed. Can you explain how you are considering doing the svg support? Have you looked at the libsvg work that Carl Worth did?
Possibly the pdf portion of the svg2pdf tool may be worth using for a crs2pdf tool?
The xar format is really similar to pdf and ps in a lot of basic ways. There are (of course) a whole lot of differences too. Comparison:
http://scratchcomputing.com/projects/uber-converter/chromista_features.html
The plan for chromista (the svg,xar,pdf,ps hub) is to essentially design a random-access database in YAML format which can represent all of the xar entities, metadata, etc. So, if you want to create a ps/pdf from that, you just have to reach in and grab all of the data and turn it into a stream. Support for higher-level xar objects like quickshapes, morphs (blends), etc. will be much later, but the svg/pdf/ps connectors will probably need some common down-conversion at that point. This might be done via a "dumber" version of chromista (using a utility program to downconvert within the hub.)
If the inkscape group can come up with a volunteer or paid developer, I would be happy to help them work within the uber-converter framework. As for the current efforts, I'm hoping to have something workable within a few weeks.
Great, I think it sounds like Carl's svg2pdf tool may give us a semi-feasible near term quick win, but longer term we're going to need something more maintainable, and from this sense, having it built atop uberconverter sounds like the ideal long term solution.
I haven't been following this too closely, what's the preferred library for PDF?
Well, we don't really have one yet, but Cairo is probably the strongest contender here at the moment. I'll talk with Carl more about uberconverter tomorrow.
Bryce
I think if enough people pitched in funds, we could actually make this happen. This is one feature I think we as a community could just force through, by hiring some mercenary to attack and kill it for us, hardcore style.
What about what inkscape earned through SoC? What's the status of this?
ralf
Bryce Harrington wrote:
Can you all tell me what you think? I really have no solid idea if enough people would be open to this plan. Are you a user that'd be willing to pledge $100 or more towards this? Are you a developer that'd be willing to commit to doing this work for some $k? Or do you have some ideas on how we could make this need get met? Please email me and let me know what you think.
How about this: we talked at OCAL recently about coloring books [1]. Once Inkscape is able to create such a book, we put one on sale with an addition of 1 or 2 USD to the price, all profits going to the person who implemented PDF export. I have no idea if this can generate a compelling sum of money (or if it can generate money at all).
If this works, i have other similar ideas, for example printing a calendar.
[1] - http://openclipart.org/wiki/index.php/Coloring_Books
On Fri, Dec 02, 2005 at 10:04:31AM +0200, Nicu Buculei wrote:
Bryce Harrington wrote:
Can you all tell me what you think? I really have no solid idea if enough people would be open to this plan. Are you a user that'd be willing to pledge $100 or more towards this? Are you a developer that'd be willing to commit to doing this work for some $k? Or do you have some ideas on how we could make this need get met? Please email me and let me know what you think.
How about this: we talked at OCAL recently about coloring books [1]. Once Inkscape is able to create such a book, we put one on sale with an addition of 1 or 2 USD to the price, all profits going to the person who implemented PDF export. I have no idea if this can generate a compelling sum of money (or if it can generate money at all).
I think this is a really cool idea. :-)
Of course we can easily do a connect the dots book too. ;-)
Bryce
Bryce Harrington wrote:
On Fri, Dec 02, 2005 at 10:04:31AM +0200, Nicu Buculei wrote:
How about this: we talked at OCAL recently about coloring books [1]. Once Inkscape is able to create such a book, we put one on sale with an addition of 1 or 2 USD to the price, all profits going to the person who implemented PDF export. I have no idea if this can generate a compelling sum of money (or if it can generate money at all).
I think this is a really cool idea. :-)
Of course we can easily do a connect the dots book too. ;-)
I was thinking more about the calendar idea and have some refinements for it.
At lulu.com people publish all kinds of calendars with a price in the 10-20$ range - http://calendars.lulu.com/browse/
We can do a kind of competition on our deviantArt group to get 12 beautiful images for a 2006 Inkscape calendar just in time for the new year celebration. Or as an alternative, do a calendar using images of our about dialogs screens or proposals for the dialog.
Now is December, the time when people are supposed to buy calendars and an Inkscape calendar can be a perfect holidays gift for geeks (or for our own moms :p ).
On Fri, 2005-12-02 at 12:07 +0200, Nicu Buculei wrote:
Bryce Harrington wrote:
On Fri, Dec 02, 2005 at 10:04:31AM +0200, Nicu Buculei wrote:
How about this: we talked at OCAL recently about coloring books [1]. Once Inkscape is able to create such a book, we put one on sale with an addition of 1 or 2 USD to the price, all profits going to the person who implemented PDF export. I have no idea if this can generate a compelling sum of money (or if it can generate money at all).
I think this is a really cool idea. :-)
Of course we can easily do a connect the dots book too. ;-)
I was thinking more about the calendar idea and have some refinements for it.
At lulu.com people publish all kinds of calendars with a price in the 10-20$ range - http://calendars.lulu.com/browse/
We can do a kind of competition on our deviantArt group to get 12 beautiful images for a 2006 Inkscape calendar just in time for the new year celebration. Or as an alternative, do a calendar using images of our about dialogs screens or proposals for the dialog.
Now is December, the time when people are supposed to buy calendars and an Inkscape calendar can be a perfect holidays gift for geeks (or for our own moms :p ).
Yeah, I'm totally into...how do you want to proceed?
Jon
Jon Phillips wrote:
On Fri, 2005-12-02 at 12:07 +0200, Nicu Buculei wrote:
We can do a kind of competition on our deviantArt group to get 12 beautiful images for a 2006 Inkscape calendar just in time for the new year celebration. Or as an alternative, do a calendar using images of our about dialogs screens or proposals for the dialog.
Now is December, the time when people are supposed to buy calendars and an Inkscape calendar can be a perfect holidays gift for geeks (or for our own moms :p ).
Yeah, I'm totally into...how do you want to proceed?
That depends on what we want to do: if we want a deviantART contest, we should ask ScislaC if he want/can organize it, if we want to reuse some old images, then is simpler, we have just a selecting work.
I am not very sure we have enough time to run a competition (it should be open at least a few weeks, can just one week suffice?) and have a product ready with some time in advance for holidays.
Nicu Buculei wrote:
Bryce Harrington wrote:
Can you all tell me what you think? I really have no solid idea if enough people would be open to this plan. Are you a user that'd be willing to pledge $100 or more towards this? Are you a developer that'd be willing to commit to doing this work for some $k? Or do you have some ideas on how we could make this need get met? Please email me and let me know what you think.
How about this: we talked at OCAL recently about coloring books [1]. Once Inkscape is able to create such a book, we put one on sale with an addition of 1 or 2 USD to the price, all profits going to the person who implemented PDF export. I have no idea if this can generate a compelling sum of money (or if it can generate money at all).
If this works, i have other similar ideas, for example printing a calendar.
For making a coloring book, I would think our current PDF export via ps=>ps2pdfa would be good enough.
Aaron Spike
participants (9)
-
unknown＠example.com -
Bryce Harrington -
bulia byak -
Eric Wilhelm -
John Taber -
Jon Phillips -
Nicu Buculei -
Ralf Stephan -
Taraben, Adib