Hi,

I'm not sure if this is the place to post this problem...I created a catalogue using Inkscape and require it to be converted to high-res pdf for the printers. I have used almost all apps, such as indesign, illustrator, gimp, scribus, but they dont recognise the inskcape svg or plain svg. Even when I export as png, it wont rasterise properly using any of the above programs. I have tried ps, eps, even tried TIFF using the separation tool in gimp to no avail. Can anyone help please?

Feel free to speak as if I'm an absolute noob!

I don't know much abut high resolution or PDFs, so I might not have the answer. But try this:

- File menu > Save As
- Choose PDF from the dropdown menu and append the .pdf behind the file name.
- Save

This causes the Portable Document Format dialog to open. There, about halfway down, is the setting: Resolution for rasterization (dpi). I know the default is 90, and that's what you should see when you first open it. And in most cases, that's what should be used. But I don't know what number you should use for high resolution for printing.

Have you already tried that? If so, I'm afraid we've reached the extent of my knowledge on this subject. But hopefully someone else will know what to do, and/or know the right dpi number.

When you say not opening, is it opening at all, or is it opening but not showing, eg blur correctly?
have you tried opening it in a web browser like Firefox/opera? Would be good to know if it has some malformed svg. Defiantly is a bug if it doesn't open correctly in any other programs and would be worth reporting on: https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/

Try the save as pdf root from within Inkscape, it should give the best results.
alternatively, if you just want a hi-res bitmap, go to file->export bitmap and select 300+ dpi in the options

Thanks for replying. The files will not place in indesign. They open in gimp and illustrator, however the images and text do not display correctly like they do in inkscape. I saved as pdf using cairo but it doesnt convert the transparency's used in the document and the text looks very chunky and some images are pixelated. When I try opening the tiff file (created in Gimp with CMYK Separation) in scribus to use their pdf convertor, which I am told is much more powerful than cairo, part of the text is missing, but everything else is displaying correctly.

The printer has told me all files must be above 300dpi. If I export as high-res bitmap will there be much data loss as opposed to the SVG quality?

2 davesnokiafone. Simply go to http://svg.scand.com and download "SVG Kit for Adobe Creative Suite". This plug-in adds SVG image support to InDesign, so you can forget about all the conversions

(using a macbook intel core 2 duo 2 ghz, 1gb ram, mac os x 10.4.11 tiger)

at least i have been able to open inkscape svg files on scribus 1.3.7 and 1.3.8 on a macbook. i´ve not tested other versions, so i cannot tell they wont open them too.
i´ve seen some users complaining about missing images on import to scribus. but this can be solved if you edit the file externally with a text editor like textedit, smultron...

after you save the file, open it on your text editor and look for text like this ¨file:///volumes/somethingelse/whatever/yourimage.png¨.
just delete the part ¨file:¨ and save. now scribus will display your images correctly. furthermore, if you imported the image from the same folder where the svg file is located. then you can get rid of the whole ¨file:///volumes/...¨ and leave only the name of the image file. scribus and inkscape are able to locate the images relative to the folder where your svg file is saved.

the problem here is the text ¨file:¨. but if you edit the svg in inkscape after removing the line ¨file:¨ and save, it will appear again.

also inkscape svg files appear larger in scribus. because where inkscape writes 35 as a pixel values, scribus will read 35 as point values. if you edit the files in the text editor and add px at the end of the number like: 35px, scribus will load the object with the correct size. but you would have to do it to each object your document has.

this is somethin i´m stil trying to figure out correctly, but i think it can be solved adding the property ¨viewBox¨ after the width and height values corresponding to the page size. if your page is 1 x 1 inches, indicate ¨0 0 72 x 72¨ in viewBox. the two zeros are for position, not size. remember in your text editor you´ll see width and height values in pixels (90 x 90), add px at the end of the numbers. you can also use the xml editor (ctrl+shift+x) in inkscape for this. you can add the property add the start of the xml structure, where you see the size of the page. but inkscape wont add px on pixel values, i don´t know if there´s a way to achive that.

i think you can edit each svg template on inkscape to add them the ¨viewBox¨ property with its corresponding size in points for each page size, letter, envelope, tabloid... each one at a time. then the only further step will be adding ¨px¨ on page size values externally with the text editor. EVERYTIME YOU EDIT THE FILE in inkscape, that part will be removed again.

what´s more after this is done, you can change the size of the page to anything without having to indicate the point values in ¨viewBox¨ again.

it seems confusing, correct anything i got wrong, i discovered this recently. hope it helps.