So, Inkscape can't save these files properly. This is a well known bug in Uniconvertor and isn't getting fixed any time soon. Both EMF and WMF have problems with gradients; the WMF converter just crashes because of it, while the EMF converter helpfully ignores all gradients instead. The "official" advice at this point is save-as-bitmap... That's how hard the bug is to fix apparently.

I'm looking for workarounds, external or web programs if need be, to get a vector WMF or EMF file out of an Inkscape or basic SVG. However convoluted your method is, WMF/EMF is a format that's hard to avoid for many purposes. Any advice?

What hasn't worked so far:

• Updating inkscape.
• Updating uniconvertor.
• Using uniconvertor externally.
• Cloudconvert. It "cheats", rasterizing everything.
• Copy/pasting inside Windows -- The EMF it puts in the copy/paste buffer is no better than the EMF it saves to file, gradients are just gone.
• svg2emf -- heartbreakingly close, it makes nice clean vector EMFs with working gradients! But alas is buggy. Transforms seem to confuse it, causing it to clip, and until the day Inkscape has a real working 'flatten all transforms' button, all my attempts at getting "raw" SVG just make it worse. Maybe some sort of SVG cleaner could help it cooperate. Or some sort of native editor for EMF, so I can move the clipping boxes.

Have you tried the pre-release .91?

EMF and WMF input and output filters have been completely rewritten and are now cross-platform.

http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php ... #EMF.2FWMF

Tried copy/paste in 0.41, but that's no good, as one might have expected. I will try the 0.91.

Hah. They "fixed" the gradients in 0.91 by converting them into flat colors. Simple copy/pasting does not work. You have to save-as.

Saving as EMF or WMF gives you several gradient-related options to play with. The 'rectangular gradient' option becomes flat-color. The 'convert gradient into triangular series' kind of works, though looks slightly funny, and kind of isn't 100% vector anymore, but might do for now.

Certainly far better than no gradient at all. Thank you!