very large font size when entering text in svg created by pstoedit

[Bug Importer]

I am using Inkscape (0.45) in both Ubuntu and Windows. When I transfer
files between OSes the fonts are all freaked out (Windows doesn't have the
Bitstream type for instance). Yet my issue is not graphical...

What then tends to happen is that the font size control/text box starts
behaving awkward. It automatically assigns very large font sizes to all new
text. When I am trying to edit the size manually so I can bring it back to
something reasonable, the automatic input validation(?) goes wacky and send
the font size to a range of millions!!! Eventually Inkscape stalls and
crashes...

Notice: I attached a sample svg file. It was converted to svg from ps with
the pstoedit tool.

[Bug Importer (bug-importer)]

I have more specific information! When I use the font: Lucida Sans Unicode
the font dialog etc crashes!!! When I use Arial it behaves properly...
Perhaps is it some font support issue

[vonHalenbach (lustik)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Inkscape better. You reported this bug a long while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue for you? Can you try with latest Inkscape release? Thanks in advance.

[Tim Holy (holy-wustl)]

I can verify this with a version built today from SVN trunk. But I think this is basically the same as bug 169125. I also used pstoedit. Copying/pasting to another document also works as a workaround.

[Tom Davidson (tjd-mit)]

I can confirm that if you try to insert new text in the attached file that the default font size is 8640 pts.

The bug in 169125 was traced to an error in the input svg file, and there's also something funky about your input file (for instance, the requested font size is 0.01px). The svg that you posted looks like it had been opened in inkscape and resaved--can you provide the original, as generated by gnuplot?.

The 'input validation wackiness' with very large font sizes sounds a lot like bug 168397. See if you agree...

[Tom Davidson (tjd-mit)]

Firefox 2 doesn't render any text at all in the provided SVG, which also argues for a problem with the input file. Marking incomplete until we can figure out if there is any Inkscape bug here (apart from the font size control and crashing issues, which are already at bug 168397 and bug 169057 )

[Tim Holy (holy-wustl)]

Sorry for the long delay (I wondered if I'd get replies by email and didn't check back with a browser).

I did an SVN update today, and recompiled (and the "About Inkscape" confirms I'm running the version I built today). I still see the bug.

Here's an attached file that was created in the following way:
1. Draw a circle in inkscape, starting from a blank canvas
2. Save as .eps
3. pstoedit -f plot-svg inktest_inkscape.eps inktest_inkscape.svg

You can trigger the bug by clicking on the text tool and then typing a single letter. At least on my system, the font size is 7200.

I'll attach the eps file in a separate posting.

I'm running Ubuntu Feisty.

[Tim Holy (holy-wustl)]

Here's the original eps file that was fed to pstoedit

[Tim Holy (holy-wustl)]

For completeness, it works on a graph produced by Matlab, too.

[Tim Holy (holy-wustl)]

...and here's the Matlab-produced eps file. (BTW, when I said it "works," I meant "the bug still applies," not that Inkscape works correctly.)

[Tom Davidson (tjd-mit)]

OK, I can confirm that when I open the 'inktest_inkscape.svg' file and enter text it is big (in my case 28800 px). When I try to change the font size either using the drop-down menu on the toolbar, by entering text into the toolbar, or by setting the font using the text and font dialog, that the fontsize always gets set to 720x whatever I specify (test this by trying to set the font size to 1 -- I get a 720pt font)

I no longer have the autocomplete problems you mention earlier, and I don't get a crash with very large font sizes. I think that those two aspects of this problem were due to the two bugs I mentioned above, which Bulia recently fixed ( bug 168397 and bug 169057 ) Can you confirm all this?

Thanks for providing the great simple test cases and step-by-step instructions. I think a developer would now have enough info to go to work on this, so I'll mark it 'triaged'...

[Tim Holy (holy-wustl)]

> I no longer have the autocomplete problems you mention earlier, and I don't get a crash with very large
> font sizes. I think that those two aspects of this problem were due to the two bugs I mentioned above,
> which Bulia recently fixed ( bug 168397 and bug 169057 ) Can you confirm all this?

Sorry, while I've been the main reporter recently, I'm not the same person who started this bug report, so I'm not sure what you're referring to by autocomplete problems. I did not have a crash when I tried changing a single letter to 144pt font.

But on the main point, I'm glad to hear that we're making progress!

More relevant info:
I just tested the EPS import feature. If I import those eps files directly into inkscape I don't see the font problem (even though inkscape is calling pstoedit to do the import...). One oddity, however, is that the imported graphics are really, really small and have to be resized to get back to being an appreciable portion of the page. This is a different behavior than if you call pstoedit from the command line and open the resulting svg file. It seems that something about sizing is off-kilter...

[Tom Davidson (tjd-mit)]

OK, so this is due to there being a 'viewbox' element in the SVG file created by pstoedit. Viewboxes are not handled correctly by inkscape, and cause all sorts of problems (there are 12 *open* bugs if you search the tracker for viewbox). This particular issue is covered at : bug 168370. Glad we got that sorted out!

[Tom Davidson (tjd-mit)]

(You can verify this by deleting the viewbox element, either with a text editor, or with Inkscape's XML editor. When you do, the drawing gets very small, as you noted with the direct eps import, but font sizes are drawn correctly).

If you think the workflow that led to the creation of this file is something other users might reasonably try, perhaps you want to open a new bug about problems with pstoedit import (I think this one has enough extraneous issues that it's better to close it and start fresh...

[Tim Holy (holy-wustl)]

OK, now you can turn your attention to bug #190424.

On Friday 08 February 2008, Tom Davidson wrote:
> *** This bug is a duplicate of bug 168370 ***
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/168370
>
> (You can verify this by deleting the viewbox element, either with a text
> editor, or with Inkscape's XML editor. When you do, the drawing gets
> very small, as you noted with the direct eps import, but font sizes are
> drawn correctly).
>
> If you think the workflow that led to the creation of this file is
> something other users might reasonably try, perhaps you want to open a
> new bug about problems with pstoedit import (I think this one has enough
> extraneous issues that it's better to close it and start fresh...

[Thomas Holder (speleo3)]

fixed in svn revision 20284