Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: Images & PDF output

[Nik Clayton <nik@nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk>]

On Thu, Jun 08, 2000 at 10:16:55PM +0100, Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
> Nik Clayton writes:
>  > moment.  Because we're a free software project we need to use freely
>  > available software, so that rules out any commercial offerings.
> 
> PDF is a good format. I know Adobe own it, but the format is
> published, and there are several free renderers. do you rule that out?

PDF as a vector format or as a bitmap format?

And could Adobe ever pull a Unisys and try and extract license fees for
it?

Personally, I'm more comfortable using something like PNG as the master
(bitmap) format, and then converting to other formats as necessary.

>  > We've pretty much settled on using PNG for the raster format (none of
>  > the licensing issues that GIF has), and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics)
>  > for the vector format.
>  > 
>  > Anyone got any opinions pro/anti- these?
> 
> I think SVG is potentially great, but isn't a bit premature to rely on
> it? 

The other choice in the running for vector graphics was EPS.  But I don't
know of any free packages that can use EPS as a native format, and retain
additional information about the diagram (like grouping of different 
elements).

SVG has the advantage of being XML based (for what that's worth).

> Isn't it still a draft spec? are there are 100% implementations?
> Can you show me a foolproof command-line SVG to EPS converter for use
> with older bits of software which are unlikely to change (eg dvips)?

Sketch (http://sketch.sourceforge.net/) is a CorelDraw-a-like, written
in Python/Tk.  It's native format is not SVG, but it can read and write
SVG files.  It also comes with a commandline converter that will do the
SVG to EPS conversion.

dia (http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia/) is more like Visio.  It can't
read SVG files (yet) but it can export them.

N
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