artefacts in pdf from R with ghostscript

Bug #668701 reported by Karl Brand
20
This bug affects 4 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Inkscape
New
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

Esteemed IS Users and Developers,

.PDF output from the os program, R, opens fine with ghostscript or adobe reader (original file- phase.comps.pdf*).

But in Inkscape the plotted points- small color filled circles- appear to be replaced by the letter 'G (phase.comps.in_IS.svg)

I'm running Inkscape 0.48.0 r9654.

Output is from R v2.11.1, which used ghostscript v8.71 to produce the pdf (phase.comps.pdf*)

Any suggestions or tips pm this issue greatly apprecioated,

Karl

*seems i can only attach one file. So this one omitted for now.

Revision history for this message
Karl Brand (brandk) wrote :
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Karl Brand (brandk) wrote :

...and the omitted file

su_v (suv-lp)
tags: added: importing pdf text
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su_v (suv-lp) wrote :

in parts reproduced with Inkscape 0.48 and 0.48+devel r9866 on OS X 10.5.8

"the plotted points- small color filled circles-" in the PDF file are indeed glyphs i.e. regular text not paths (try copy&paste as text from the PDF editor), using a dingbat (PIfont ?) font that may or not be recognized, found as installed and used for display on-canvas in Inkscape 0.48: if the font "Zapf Dingbats" is found among the installed fonts, Inkscape uses it but displays a different glyph than in the PDF.

tags: added: fonts
removed: text
Revision history for this message
su_v (suv-lp) wrote :

Correction to previous comment:
- (try copy&paste as text from the PDF editor)
+ (try copy&paste as text from the PDF viewer)

Attached screenshot: PDF opened in Inkscape 0.48+devel r9866 on OS X 10.5.8:
('ZapfDingbats.dfont' from osx system installation made available in Inkscape)

If Inkscape doesn't see 'Zapf Dingbats' among the installed fonts, it uses the fallback font 'Sans' for the 'dots' (which displays the glyph as regular Unicode character 'G').

(Note that dingbat fonts (or fonts with glyphs not mapped to Unicode) don't work in the Windows port of Inkscape at all, and are only partially supported on other platforms afaiu).

Possibly related reports/issues:
a) symbol fonts
Bug #165665 “non-Unicode symbol fonts do not work on Windows”

b) font substitution
Bug #168658 “font substitution is silent”
Bug #170155 “Font substitution dialog on file open” [1]
Bug #600068 “Find and change font”

c) use embedded fonts from the PDF as SVG fonts (not supported) or convert text to path on import of a PDF file (not supported).

Revision history for this message
Brian Cox (b-cox) wrote :

I have a similar problem using either open or closed circles in R plots. In the imported pdf in Inkscape they are replaced with a "q". However they view fine with either Adobe or evince This also happens in illustrator, but I can use a find replace to add in the open circle font back in. Since both R and Inkscape are open source can I import the font sets from R into Inkscape somehow?

Inkscape 0.48.0 r9654

R version:
platform x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
arch x86_64
os linux-gnu
system x86_64, linux-gnu
status
major 2
minor 11.1
year 2010
month 05
day 31
svn rev 52157
language R
version.string R version 2.11.1 (2010-05-31)

Revision history for this message
Jonas Steinmann (steinmann-jonas) wrote :

Am also affected by this bug.

My workaround for this is to use pdf2svg which was apparently written to address this issue.

http://www.cityinthesky.co.uk/opensource/pdf2svg

Revision history for this message
Karl Brand (brandk) wrote :

Jonas, thank you very much sharing this workaround - *just* when i needed it too: 1 month before my dissertation goes to the printer.

Revision history for this message
su_v (suv-lp) wrote :

See also:
Bug #190541 “Letter "q" imported instead of a circle plot symbol in PDF import ”

Revision history for this message
ottadini (ben-harrison) wrote :

pdf2svg can be found in Ubuntu repositories for Precise: http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise/pdf2svg

Revision history for this message
su_v (suv-lp) wrote :

The original test case (the PDF attached in comment #1) imports and renders as expected in Inkscape 0.48.5, Inkscape 0.91 r13725 and 0.91+devel r13937 on OS X 10.7.5 with latest stable versions of relevant dependencies (including poppler, cairo and fontconfig).

The same inkscape versions (0.48.5, 0.91+devel r13937) compiled with and using older versions of the dependencies still expose the reported issue (showing 'G' instead of the glyph from the symbol font).

AFAICT based on these recent tests, this seems a problem in dependencies used by Inkscape, and not Inkscape itself.

Proposing to close as 'Invalid' for project 'Inkscape'.

Revision history for this message
su_v (suv-lp) wrote :

Users with latest Inkscape 0.1 installed, but still affected by this issue (due to older versions of dependencies), alternatively can import the PDF with '[x] import via poppler' checked (in Inkscape's PDF import options dialog): this will outline the glyphs of all texts as paths (fonts subsetted in the PDF file will use clones for repeatedly used glyphs). The outline paths are based on font information embedded in the PDF file.

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