Inkscape Forum Inkscape > Why can't Inkscape import eps?

EPS is AFAIK a vector format. svg is a vector format. So why can't
Inkscape import it?  Is there a technical problem in creating an
import filter?
--
John Culleton
ATTN Publishers/authors:
If you don't read you don't succeed.
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On 2007-August-20  , at 19:11 , John R. Culleton wrote:
> EPS is AFAIK a vector format. svg is a vector format. So why can't
> Inkscape import it?  Is there a technical problem in creating an
> import filter?

Inkscape can import it... sort of. Inkscape (on Linux and OS X at
least, don't know the status on Windows) can call pstoedit which
converts the EPS to SVG for Inkscape to edit. There are a few
glitches associated with editing files after the conversion but most
are sorted by simply copy pasting the output of pstoedit into a new
Inkscape instance.
Pstoedit does not do a perfect job at converting EPS files but it is
usually pretty good.

JiHO
---
http://jo.irisson.free.fr/



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On 20/08/07 19:59:43, jiho wrote:
> 
> On 2007-August-20  , at 19:11 , John R. Culleton wrote:
> > EPS is AFAIK a vector format. svg is a vector format. So why can't
> > Inkscape import it?  Is there a technical problem in creating an
> > import filter?
> 
> Inkscape can import it... sort of. Inkscape (on Linux and OS X at  
> least, don't know the status on Windows) can call pstoedit which  
> converts the EPS to SVG for Inkscape to edit. There are a few  

Is there also a free / open source plugin for pstoedit that allows 
svg-output?
Using the extra library for linux from pstoedit it says:

svg: .svg: scalable vector graphics (license key needed, see pstoedit 
manual)
(no valid key found) (/usr/local/lib/pstoedit/plugins_linux.3.42.so)

By the way: Would pstoedit allow to import a vector graphic from a 
pdf-file to
svg/inkscape?

Lynx

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On 8/20/07, lynx.abraxas@freenet.de <lynx.abraxas@freenet.de> wrote:
>
> Is there also a free / open source plugin for pstoedit that allows svg-output?
> Using the extra library for linux from pstoedit it says:
>
> svg: .svg: scalable vector graphics (license key needed, see pstoedit  manual)
> (no valid key found) (/usr/local/lib/pstoedit/plugins_linux.3.42.so)
>
> By the way: Would pstoedit allow to import a vector graphic from a pdf-file to
> svg/inkscape?
>
> Lynx

SVN has direct pdf import in it. Gotta love Googles Summer of Code :)
Miklos has done a great job on it, works a treat.

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On 2007-August-20  , at 20:35 , lynx.abraxas@freenet.de wrote:
>
> svg/inkscape?
Yes there is, the pstoedit device is called "plot-svg" and the plugin
is in a package usually called "plotutils".

Cheers,

JiHO
---
http://jo.irisson.free.fr/



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John R. Culleton schrieb:
> EPS is AFAIK a vector format. svg is a vector format. So why can't  
> Inkscape import it?  Is there a technical problem in creating an 
> import filter?
short question long answer ...

-PS/EPS is a whole programming language with loops sub-routines etc.
-this makes it rather complex to generate a good converting result
-all known importers (pstoedit) that inkscape uses are based on
ghostscript that is known to be an good importer
-that needs ghostscript installed on your system as this is not a part
of inkscape
-so there is no real need to invent the wheel a second time

btw there is a postscript rendering library called hieryglyph
http://hieroglyph.freedesktop.org/wiki/ . Maybe this one can replace the
usage of ghostscript one day

HTH,

Adib.

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On 8/20/07, John R. Culleton <john@wexfordpress.com> wrote:
> EPS is AFAIK a vector format. svg is a vector format. So why can't
> Inkscape import it?

Because converting between vector formats is very difficult. It's
nothing like converting between bitmap formats. It's more like
rewriting an arbitrarily complex program from one programming language
to another.

Anyway, as others mentioned, development version has very good support
for PDF and AI import. Just use PDF as much as possible and avoid
PS/EPS.

--
bulia byak
Inkscape. Draw Freely.
http://www.inkscape.org

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On Monday 20 August 2007, bulia byak wrote:
> support for PDF and AI import. Just use PDF as much as possible and
> avoid PS/EPS.

pdf is easy to make from eps. I have Inkscape 45. What version do I
need?

--
John Culleton
ATTN Publishers/authors:
If you don't read you don't succeed.
Free short list of publishing/marketing books.
http://wexfordpress.com/tex/shortlist.pdf



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On 8/20/07, John R. Culleton <john@wexfordpress.com> wrote:
> pdf is easy to make from eps. I have Inkscape 45. What version do I
> need?

You need a recent development version, not 0.45.

--
bulia byak
Inkscape. Draw Freely.
http://www.inkscape.org

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On 2007-August-20  , at 22:09 , John R. Culleton wrote:
>> Anyway, as others mentioned, development version has very good
>> support for PDF and AI import. Just use PDF as much as possible and
>> avoid PS/EPS.
>
> pdf is easy to make from eps. I have Inkscape 45. What version do I
> need?

You need a development snapshot. You can get one from there:
http://inkscape.modevia.com/
Beware however that these versions are potentially less stable than
the official versions of Inkscape.

JiHO
---
http://jo.irisson.free.fr/



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On Mon, 20 Aug 2007 15:18:48 -0400, "bulia byak" <buliabyak@gmail.com> 
wrote:
> On 8/20/07, John R. Culleton <john@wexfordpress.com> wrote:
>> EPS is AFAIK a vector format. svg is a vector format. So why can't
>> Inkscape import it?
> 
> Because converting between vector formats is very difficult. It's
> nothing like converting between bitmap formats. It's more like
> rewriting an arbitrarily complex program from one programming language
> to another.

It isn't just that -- in the case of EPS, specifically, it really is a
programming language.  There's no way to write a general-purpose EPS 
importer
without implementing the entire PostScript runtime to execute EPS files.

It's possible to leverage an existing runtime like Ghostscript (which is
what pstoedit does), but I know from personal experience that there's 
still
an awful lot of glue that needs to go in to make it usable.

This issue is one of the reasons that Adobe switched to PDF instead of
EPS -- it's much easier to implement PDF import because it is much
simpler than a general-purpose programming language like PostScript. 
And,
indeed, PDF import is one of our SoC projects this summer.

-mental


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On Monday 20 August 2007, bulia byak wrote:
> On 8/20/07, John R. Culleton <john@wexfordpress.com> wrote:
> > pdf is easy to make from eps. I have Inkscape 45. What version do
> > I need?
>
> You need a recent development version, not 0.45.

Well I tried, but didn't succeed.

The most recent version August 19, doesn't show pdf on the import
selection menu but does show ps and eps. But ps, eps and pdf type
files won't import or open.  Do I have to download or update
something else to make it work?

Otherwise I guess I need to wait for a new stable release to use the
pdf import feature.

Strangely enough the command line install of Inkscape worked better
from a gui terminal session as a user than from  a regular console
session as root.  The root run offered strange error messages, like:
Cannot find "*".

Incksape uses autopackage, Sciribus uses Cmake, most other packages
still use ./configure followed by make.  We are I fear headed for a
kind of tower of Babel with install methods on Open source programs.

--
John Culleton
ATTN Publishers/authors:
If you don't read you don't succeed.
Free short list of publishing/marketing books.
http://wexfordpress.com/tex/shortlist.pdf



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On 8/21/07, John R. Culleton <john@wexfordpress.com> wrote:
> The most recent version August 19, doesn't show pdf on the import
> selection menu but does show ps and eps.

Look for "Adobe PDF [via poppler]". If you don't have it in the list,
it's likely that you're actually running an old version. Go to Help >
About to see the date of the build you're running.

--
bulia byak
Inkscape. Draw Freely.
http://www.inkscape.org

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On Tuesday 21 August 2007, bulia byak wrote:
> On 8/21/07, John R. Culleton <john@wexfordpress.com> wrote:
> > The most recent version August 19, doesn't show pdf on the import
> > selection menu but does show ps and eps.
>
> Look for "Adobe PDF [via poppler]". If you don't have it in the
> list, it's likely that you're actually running an old version. Go
> to Help > About to see the date of the build you're running.

Help About shows the version 45 splash screen,  with
this in the upper right corner:
Inkscape 0.45+devel, built Aug 19 2007

I find Adobe Ilustrator in the menu but no Adobe PDF [via Poppler]

I'll check at the Inkscape home site but right now I cna't get to it.
Some sort of cache problem.





--
John Culleton
ATTN Publishers/authors:
If you don't read you don't succeed.
Free short list of publishing/marketing books.
http://wexfordpress.com/tex/shortlist.pdf



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> Incksape uses autopackage, Sciribus uses Cmake, most other packages 
> still use ./configure followed by make.  We are I fear headed for a 
> kind of tower of Babel with install methods on Open source programs.  

I don't think we are, for two reasons.

The first is that I remember when almost every project used the same
build system, and that build system consisted of editing the Makefiles
by hand for your platform. If you were lucky, the project's INSTALL file
gave you hints on how to correctly set the make variables, and told you
what libraries it depended on. If you were unlucky, you found out when
make failed, and still couldn't tell whether it needed a library you
didn't have or was just looking in the wrong place. I often complain
about build systems being hard to use as a developer, but for a user
it's definitely got much easier. A proliferation of build systems is
better than none at all.

The second reason is simply that it doesn't matter if projects use
different build systems, because they very rarely need to communicate
with each other. The only cost in using projects with different build
systems is that you have to have all their build systems installed
rather than just one.

On Tuesday 21 August 2007, Daniel Hulme wrote:
> project's INSTALL file gave you hints on how to correctly set the
> make variables, and told you what libraries it depended on. If you
> were unlucky, you found out when make failed, and still couldn't
> tell whether it needed a library you didn't have or was just
> looking in the wrong place. I often complain about build systems
> being hard to use as a developer, but for a user it's definitely
> got much easier. A proliferation of build systems is better than
> none at all.
>
I disagree that multiple build systems make it easer for the user.
This is I think an oxymoron.  A common configure/build system is
easier almost by definition.
> The second reason is simply that it doesn't matter if projects use
> different build systems, because they very rarely need to
> communicate with each other. The only cost in using projects with
> different build systems is that you have to have all their build
> systems installed rather than just one.

I am a member of the user class. Multiiple install methods mean that
in addition to becoming skilled at using the programs themselves one
must become reaquainted with the details and the gotchas of a
particular build method every six months or so.  I use TeX, Scribus,
Gimp, Krita, Inkscape etc. in my publishing endeavours.   Six months
from now will I remember that the packaging system used by Inkscape
works better in command line mode from a gui window than from a
console session? Will I be able to find the email that tells how to
use cmake for Scribus? Is it KDE or Koffice that I have to reinstall
to upgrade Krita? And so on.  The genius of Unix has always been that
if you knew how to manipulate one Unix you were 90% familar with
running another.  The genius of Open Source software has always been
that you downloaded the tarball, ran ./configure, make and make
install and it worked every time (barring missing libraries of
course). You never even had to read the install guide.

I don't expect to change the course already decided on for Inkscape.
But it comes with a cost for the user. And ultimately that will hurt
acceptance of the product.  There is more than one package I have
downloaded where the build process and the unexpected dependencies
wove such a tangle that I gave up and went on to something else.

--
John Culleton
ATTN Publishers/authors:
If you don't read you don't succeed.
Free short list of publishing/marketing books.
http://wexfordpress.com/tex/shortlist.pdf



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On Tue, Aug 21, 2007 at 01:50:04PM -0400, John R. Culleton wrote:
> > got much easier. A proliferation of build systems is better than
> > none at all.
> >
> I disagree that multiple build systems make it easer for the user. 
> This is I think an oxymoron.  A common configure/build system is 
> easier almost by definition. 
I wouldn't go as far as saying it's an oxymoron, but it's not what I
said. Multiple build systems make it easier for the user, when the
alternative is having to configure everything by hand. Obviously, having
one Platonic ideal build system would be much easier for the user, but
you might as well wish for one all-purpose programming language, or an
ideal political system. Having lots, each with its own advantages and
shortcomings, is a good intermediate step on the path from having
nothing useful to having the perfect one.

> I am a member of the user class. Multiiple install methods mean that 
> in addition to becoming skilled at using the programs themselves one 
> must become reaquainted with the details and the gotchas of a 
> particular build method every six months or so.  I use TeX, Scribus, 
> Gimp, Krita, Inkscape etc. in my publishing endeavours.   Six months 
> from now will I remember that the packaging system used by Inkscape 
> works better in command line mode from a gui window than from a 
> console session? Will I be able to find the email that tells how to 
> use cmake for Scribus? Is it KDE or Koffice that I have to reinstall 
> to upgrade Krita? And so on. 
If you have to remember all of that in order to compile the software,
the build system obviously isn't working properly. What you're telling
me here isn't that there are too many build systems, it's that these
particular build systems are too hard to use. Maybe I should write a
new one...

> The genius of Unix has always been that if you knew how to manipulate
> one Unix you were 90% familar with running another.
Having had to run an autobuilder that compiled for various Unix-like
OSes like Solaris, AIX, and *BSD, of varying ages, I'm not sure I can
agree with that. Even today, as a Debian user, if a SuSE or Red Hat user
comes to me for help on a system administration task, I probably can't
help him.

> The genius of Open Source software has always been that you downloaded
> the tarball, ran ./configure, make and make install and it worked
> every time (barring missing libraries of course). You never even had
> to read the install guide. 
Perhaps I use different software to you, but it seems to me that as
recently as five years ago I still had to hand-edit Makefiles to build
from tarred sources. Having a gadget that works out all the correct
settings for you is still enough of a blessing to me that I don't mind
if I have to prod it a bit.

> I don't expect to change the course already decided on for Inkscape.
> But it comes with a cost for the user. And ultimately that will hurt
> acceptance of the product.  There is more than one package I have
> downloaded where the build process and the unexpected dependencies
> wove such a tangle that I gave up and went on to something else.  
I'm sorry to hear that. Were there no binaries available for that
product? I think people, on the whole, are willing to use the binaries
that come with their distribution. (I exclude Windows users, of course,
who have to rely on vendor-supplied binaries.) Those who aren't mostly
switch to Gentoo, whose ebuilds provide a unified user-interface to
build systems in the manner you seem to be longing for.

John R. Culleton wrote:
> The genius of Open Source software has always been 
> that you downloaded the tarball, ran ./configure, make and make 
> install and it worked every time (barring missing libraries of 
> course). You never even had to read the install guide. 

Feel free to do this with Inkscape. I create Autopackages as a
convenience for people who don't want to build from source. You are
certainly welcome to ./configure, make, make install. And if you read
the install guide, you may not be missing any libraries by the time make
comes around. :-)

Aaron Spike


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