[Clipart] Microsoft Expression

[Alan Horkan]

On Sun, 26 Nov 2006, Jon Phillips wrote:

> Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2006 23:16:42 -0800
> From: Jon Phillips <jon at rejon.org>
> To: Anthony Patarini <ampatarini at gmail.com>
> Cc: clipart at lists.freedesktop.org
> Subject: Re: [Clipart] Microsoft Expression
>
> On Sat, 2006-11-25 at 22:33 -0900, Anthony Patarini wrote:

> > > I can't figure out a way to get from Expression to .SVG other than
> > > convert to a bitmap and then embed into Inkscape.

Please do report this problem to Microsoft if you can, it would be
interesting to see if you can get any kind of a response out of them. I'm
sure mobile developers would be interested in at least some SVG support so
there might just be enought incentive for Microsoft to add SVG just as
Macromedia belatedly did.

> > You can try the AI2SVG Python script at
> > http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanwen/public/software/ai2svg.py
> >
> > If that doesn't work, you might have luck with the EPS2SVG script that
> > can be found here:
> > http://www.montefiore.ulg.ac.be/~piater/personal/software/
> >
> > Sadly, there doesn't seem to be a "drag and drop" solution at the
> > moment. Blame proprietary formats and software.
> >
> > AMP
>
> Has anyone looked at writing a convertor for Microsoft Expression?

As far as I know Creature House Expression used its own undocumented
format and Microsoft Expression uses the same format.

The workarounds suggested to import AI, EPS, or PDF into Inkscape are good
ideas and improving is much better way to spend time than reverse
engineering obselete formats.

I did however see the beta versions of Expression (about this time last
year, think it was the betas for version 4) exporting to XAML (aka Avalon,
aka Windows Presentation Framework, WPF) which sort of resembles a messed
up version of SVG (not as much as you might think, it is evolved from
earlier proposals).  This might be a slightyl easier target for someone
interested in creating a library or converter for Inkscape to use.

> Also, what about converting from PDF to PS and then importing in
> Inkscape?

Again the intermediate formats like PDF, EPS, PS, or even AI are the way
to go, especially if you have Inkscpae on Linxu with all the necessary
extensions setup correctly.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan

http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
http://alanhorkan.livejournal.com/