[Clipart] SVG Format

[Nicu Buculei]

Open Clip Art Library Feedback Form wrote:
> Name: Andreas Schnaiter
> 
> 
> Hello =),
> first I want to thank you guys for providing this useful resource.
> The request I have is to make the WMF files provided to this library
> also available in the tarball / on the page, or if you have access to
> a program to convert SVG's to WMF's, to also include WMF versions
> additional to the SVG ones.
> The reason for requesting this is that there seems to be _no_ Open
> Source/Free Software to convert SVG into another vector format
> (actually Karbon 14 tries to import, but does a really bad job),
> while there are enough to convert WMF into plenty of other vector
> graphics formats, including SVG.

The motivation of many of the contributors of this project was to 
promote the usage of open standards, specially to promote SVG. At least 
this was *my* motivation and as fair as I know, the motivation of its 
founders.
Supporting WMF, which is not an open standard and in not very well 
supported outside Windows world, looks to me counterproductive to our 
initial motivation and goals.
And it looks to me like this goal in closer than ever: Scribus has 
excellent SVG support, Abiword can use SVG graphics, Mozilla alpha 
releases contain SVG support, KDE people contacted us and they want to 
support SVG in KOffice. (and I have not mentioned Inkscape, which is 
*the best* tool for working with SVG)

> This would be required for OpenOffice, since version 1.3 can not
> import/display SVG, OpenOffice 2.0 will not be able to import SVG,
> and according to the bug report status, it is questionable that OO
> will ever be able to import SVG, especially with the upcoming OASIS
> file format.

Now I will speak with OpenOffice.org hat on (yes, I am a member of OOo 
project)
We are aware of the slow development of SVG support in OOo and IMHO, 
this development is headed in a wrong way right now (XSLT transformations)

> So theres no way to use the cliparts provided by this project as
> vector graphics in OpenOffice, which is sad.

Converting SVG to WMF is one of the workarounds proposed. I saw a recent 
proposal for OOo to support SVG by embedding images, just like other 
graphic formats (so only scaling will be possible, not other editing - 
this is how SVG is supported for example in Abiword)

> I know it's asked very much just because of OpenOffice, but it is the
> leading/most advanced Office suite available for Free Operating
> Systems.


Also support for SVG is asked very much inside OOo.

> Maybe you'll consider.
> With Best Regards,
> Andreas


-- 
nicu
OpenOffice.org Romanian NL Project Lead - http://ro.openoffice.org