[OS X TeX] OT: looking for a public-domain EPS file editor

[Paul Smyth]

Open the image with Preview and use Preview's crop tool.

Paul Smyth

On 25 Apr 2007, at 10:28, Bruno Voisin wrote:

> The short story
> ===============
>
> Is anybody aware of a public-domain EPS file editor, offering  
> similar functionality to Adobe Illustrator and running on Linux?
>
> The long story: why
> ===================
>
> Yesterday a student of my research lab asked about ways to crop an  
> EPS file, removing unwanted white space around a figure (the  
> streamlines of a flow) produced by Tecplot on Linux.
>
> I first thought about pdfcrop, part of MacTeX and gwTeX.  
> Unfortunately, applied to the EPS file (after conversion to PDF) it  
> produced no visible effect.
>
> Looking at the EPS file with Illustrator, it turns out there is  
> nothing to crop: the content of the file is delimited by a large  
> frame (an invisible rectangle), inside which there are lots of  
> white space and the actual figure.
>
> With Illustrator it's easy to solve this, by ungrouping the content  
> of the EPS file then erasing the unwanted rectangle. But the  
> student works on Linux and has no access to Illustrator, other than  
> asking me.
>
> He had tried to edit the BoundingBox comment directly in the EPS  
> code, but that wasn't successful. And we tried to identify in this  
> code the part creating the unwanted rectangle, so as to remove it,  
> but the code seems so optimized that it is absolutely  
> undecipherable (at least to us).
>
> The long story: how
> ===================
>
> After some search I found Inkscape <http://www.inkscape.org/>,  
> already mentioned on this list IIRC and which is precisely a public- 
> domain vectorial graphics editor, meant as an alternative to  
> Illustrator. And there's a Mac OS X version, running as a stand- 
> alone executable (actually calling X11).
>
> Alas, Inkscape works with the SVG format, not the EPS format. It is  
> said to be able to import and export other formats, including EPS.  
> Apparently this functionality requires pstoedit, for which an i- 
> Package exists. However:
>
> - pstoedit, as installed by i-Installer, doesn't seem to know about  
> SVG. From "pstoedit -help":
>
>> Available formats :
>>         psf:                    .fps:   Flattened PostScript (no  
>> curves)       (built-in)
>> -------------------------------------------
>>         ps:                     .spsc:  Simplified PostScript with  
>> curves      (built-in)
>> -------------------------------------------
>>         debug:                  .dbg:   for test purposes        
>> (built-in)
>> -------------------------------------------
>>         dump:                   .dbg:   for test purposes (same as  
>> debug)      (built-in)
>> -------------------------------------------
>>         gs:                     .gs:    any device that  
>> GhostScript provides - use gs:format, e.g. gs:pdfwrite  (built-in)
>> -------------------------------------------
>>         ps2ai:                  .ai:    Adobe Illustrator via  
>> ps2ai.ps of GhostScript   (built-in)
>> -------------------------------------------
>
> - Even if it did, there's no indication in Inkscape's doc on how to  
> interface pstoedit with Inkscape.
>
> Any idea?
>
> Bruno Voisin
>
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