On 2008-10-16 15:28+0100 Steve Schwartz wrote:
> I have sent the svg of x01c using svn 8892 to the scribus bug list to
> see if they could help in getting scribus to import it correctly. The
> response was swift, and that it opens up nearly ok in scribus 1.3.3.12
> (I was running 1.3.3.4), which is nearly the last in the stable 1.3.3
> chain, and looks "perfect" in 1.3.5svn (I sent them screenshots of
> inkscape and firefox). There are some small text placement issues in
> 1.3.3.12, and the graph marker glyphs don't come out correctly.
>
> I can't build the 1.3.5svn of plplot without updating a lot of other
> things on my system (and the binary rpm I found on the opensuse site
> installs ok but is missing dependencies to run), so I can't report on
> how "perfect" it is, but since 1.3.3.12 does a fairly decent job and the
> scribus people report a lot of work on the svg import in the interim,
> I'd guess that it's very good. Perhaps someone from the plplot list with
> a newer version of a linux distribution can get 1.3.5svn to run. The
> windows version of 1.3.5svn does indeed to a pretty good job (and spells
> shalom right to left as it should), but displaces graph markers slightly
> (and perhaps all text); it also uses a different font and fails to show
> superscripts raised and shrunk. I've reported this back to them for
> further comments.
>
> Anyway, generically this is good news and adds scribus to inkscape as an
> svg editor for plplot touch-ups...
Your comments inspired me to try the latest Scribus svn snapshot version
which apparently is from about 3 weeks ago.
For Debian users here, these are the instructions for building and
installing that as a Debian package. Note, you should always use the
scribus-ng Debian package name to get the latest ("next-generation") scribus
svn snapshots. The scribus Debian package name always refers to the stable
1.3.3.xxx series.
N.B. I put an asterisk in front of the steps that must be done as root. All
the rest can be done as an ordinary user.
*(1) Edit /etc/apt/sources.list
deb-src http://debian.scribus.net/debian/ testing main non-free contrib
I specified deb-src rather than deb because this site appeared not to
have amd64 (my architecture) built.
An attempt to run
"apt-get update" revealed I had to import the scribus debian signing key.
(2) Import the key
gpg gpg --search-keys scribus
choose the one with EEF818CF to import
(3) Export that key to an ascii file
gpg --armor --export EEF818CF > scribus.sig
*(4) Import that keyfile into the apt infrastructure
apt-key add ~irwin/scribus.sig
*(5) update local apt files with new repository information.
apt-get update
(6) Find out what exact versions are accessible
apt-cache showsrc scribus-ng
*(7) Install all the build dependencies of latest version available
apt-get build-dep scribus-ng=1.3.5.dfsg~svn20080921-1
(8) Get, unpack, and build deb packages for scribus-ng N.B. use the apt-src
command not apt-get.
apt-src build scribus-ng=1.3.5.dfsg~svn20080921-1
*(9) Install the resulting deb
dpkg --install scribus-ng_1.3.5.dfsg~svn20080921-1_amd64.deb
That's the end of the Debian install instructions.
I have never used scribus-ng (or even scribus) before, but the scribus-ng
GUI is pretty straightforward. I did run into one import issue; scribus
only accepts SVG file names with a ".svg" suffix so I had to rename our
various x??c.svg.?? files to something ending in that suffix in order to
import them. Once that issue was solved I imported renamed versions of
x01c.svg.01, x02c.svg.02, x08c.svg.04, x09c.svg.01, x23c.svg.06, and
x24c.svg.01.. In all cases the text placement was absolutely perfect! For
example 9, I could expand the result as much as I wanted, and it still
looked good (until I magnified it so much that the positioning artifacts
caused by PLplot's 16-bit internal storage of positions were beginning to
show!) For example 23 all mathematical symbol glyphs seemed to be available.
For example 24 all glyphs are available and the glyph rendering order
(including the complex Hindi one where one glyph is rendered in different
order than the the usual left-to-right order used for the rest of the
Hindi glyphs) is perfect!
So I am happy with this result. It can now be argued that our svg device
produces the best-looking and most accurate results of all our devices
_so long as you use software with decent SVG import capability_.
BTW, although this snapshot version of scribus-ng imports perfectly, It does
not seem quite ready for prime time in other ways. I was happily importing
various svg's when at one point the memory use went through the roof, and I
had to kill it before I ran into an out-of-memory condition on my computer.
I then invoked scribus-ng again and continued to import the same and other
files with no further OOM troubles.
Hopefully, the scribus team will stabilize this version and release it soon
so that everybody can utilize their new high-quality svg import facilities.
Until then, apparently you will be stuck with some small positioning issues
for the latest version of the current 1.3.3.xxx stable series.
Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin
Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).
Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of
Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
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