Excited to see my stuff is still around...

When I started this blog, I didn't think that most of the stuff I would write about would be of use to anyone.

However, it seems I was wrong. I've found that several of the things that I've put together in these measly pages are of use!

I also checked out some of the graphics I've made (not great, but useful ones) on OpenClipArt.org and found that they're of use too!

I created some server racks in a previous job because I couldn't find any that worked in inscape without any modification. I also wanted them to be easy to use and allow me to add servers and hardware that would fit neatly. I made each U 12 pixels high and made them available. I made them in June 09 and as of today they've been downloaded over 3500 times!

Cool! Now, what else can I make and have you thought of contributing?

-P

OmniGraffle to SVG

Lately you'd think I'm obsessed with SVG, but the truth is I'm just trying to cope with all the different diagramming tools out there and see if I can find a common format between all of them that is a standard. SVG is it. Anyway, working with Macs and all the wonderful software that they have, I've had to start looking at converting Graffle files created with OmniGraffle to SVG. The easiest way is again, converting to PDF and importing the PDF in Inkscape.

The interesting thing is that once you break out the PDF, you get all the objects and you can then fiddle around with the page. The fonts have been the one issue, as I do ask Inkscape to try to find a font similar to the one in the document, and it's not really good at doing that.

Anyway, doing a quick search on google I found graffle2svg. A pair of python scripts that will try to convert the graffle file into an SVG. In my case it didn't work since OnmiGraffle seems to have changed the format of their file format. Well, it use to be a zip file, now it's a directory.

Still, this is a good start and I look forward to trying this out and maybe helping out the developer to get it working. I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one that loves his SVG.

-P

Cisco SVG

Guess what? So I have a post where I converted the Cisco Networking Icons in EPS files into SVG. I recently noticed that Cisco was offering them in SVG format.

After downloading them to try out I had noticed that although they were in SVG, they were odd in that they basically where a small icon in the middle of the full page. They have a feedback link at the bottom so I proceeded to ask if I could make the changes to the SVGs to resize them as well as add metadata for the SVGs.

Well, Cisco got back to me. I managed to explain how I converted the files and what did I find today? Cisco had updated the SVGs and now they're right. Thank you Cisco.

I'd like to thank the person that responded, but I don't know if they want their name floating around the web, so I won't mention them. However, thank you!

Now, to draw some network diagrams.

-P

Visio and Linux or what I call "Want SVG, use PDF"

I tend to get Visio diagrams from people every once in a while. Most of the time it's the vsd type, not even the xvsd (or xml based) version. Even if I had the xvsd, I'm not sure what exactly I could do with it.

Visio does have the capabilities of exporting to SVG (at least the latest release does) but I find that they don't import properly into Inkscape. It's strange but they seem to display properly elsewhere.

The answer to this issue? Another intermediate step -- use PDF. Visio can also export to PDF directly. (Or maybe you need a plugin?)

This PDF renders correctly and when you import it into Inkscape it shows up correctly too.

Now to test another file type... Visio can export into Autocad format!!!

I just recently discovered that you can convert DWG to SVG. I haven't tried the Cad2SVG tool yet, but I'm hopeful it will also provide an SVG that's usable in Inkscape.

By the way, if you're wondering why I'm so eager to go with SVG? It's simple -- it looks good and you can zoom without losing detail (very handy with an iPhone!) And if you don't believe that there's a lot of SVG out there, check out http://svg.startpagina.nl/.

-P

EPS to SVG

Wow it's been a while since I've update this!

I have several images that I got from Cisco that are in EPS format and I wanted to use them in Inkscape for diagrams, etc. They're public domain, so I wanted to see if I could give them back to the Open Clip Art Library once I was done.

I got them from the Cisco site but couldn't find anything that could easily convert them on the command line. The ways I found involved converting to PDF and importing in Inkscape. The best way was loading them in Scribus and exporting as SVG, which worked fine, but do that with 300+ files!

In the end I found that I could use pstoedit to convert to another format and then from that format to svg. This worked flawlessly and I didn't even encounter any problems on the final svg file like the website claimed there would be.

This is what I did:

for EPS in *.eps ; do FIG=`echo "$EPS" | sed -e s/eps$/fig/` ; SVG=`echo "$EPS" | sed -e s/eps$/svg/` ; echo "Converting ... $EPS" ; pstoedit "$EPS" -f fig "$FIG" ; fig2dev -L svg "$FIG" cisco_svg/"$SVG" ; rm -f "$FIG" ; done

It worked like a charm.

-P

(Note: I've fixed the script. Thanks to Nelnik pointing out in the comments that my sed for /eps/fig/ would convert steps.eps into stfig.eps. This is due to me not being specific enough. Adding the $ at the end of the /eps/ makes it look specifically for something ending in eps. This would match the extension only in steps.eps.)