SVG in Latex

Articles > Latex

It is possible to convert SVG images into Postscript (PS) images for use in Latex documents, using the command line.

1. Download and install Inkscape.
2. Download the inkscapec.exe command-line utility, and copy this to your Inkscape directory.
3. Add the location of Inkscape (e.g. C:\program files\Inkscape) to your PATH.

You can now convert SVG images to PS images (along with a wide range of other formats: PNG, PS, EPS or PDF) using the command line:

inkscapec -P out.ps in.svg

I wrote a script (svg2ps) in PHP that iterates over all SVG files in the current directory and converts them to PS files:

<?php

$dir = ".";

// Open a known directory, and proceed to read its contents
if (is_dir($dir)) {
  if ($dh = opendir($dir)) {
    while (($file = readdir($dh)) !== false) {
      if (strtolower(substr($file, -4)) == ".svg") {
        $file_ps = str_replace(".svg", ".ps", $file);
        echo "$file => $file_ps\n";
        // add the full working directory
        $target_file = getcwd() . "\\" . $file_ps;
        $source_file = getcwd() . "\\" . $file;
        passthru("copy \"$source_file\" c:\\1.svg");
        passthru("inkscapec -P c:\\1.ps c:\\1.svg");
        passthru("copy c:\\1.ps \"$target_file\"");
        unlink("c:\\1.svg");
        unlink("c:\\1.ps");
      }
    }
    closedir($dh);
  }
}

(I am copying the files to the root directory, because this interface seems to struggle with Windows paths.)

How Not to do SVG in Latex

Other than the above approach, I also tried:

1. Imagemagick convert: This renders the vector image into a raster image, losing the vector information.