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.