PDF allways export raster instead vectorial in Inkscape 0.91 r13725 (Ubuntu 14.04)

[fgr1986]

I have found that exporting certain SVG files only containing paths (no bitmap images there)
generates a bitmap like PDF in Inkscape 0.91 r13725 (Ubuntu 14.04).
All filter like or text to path option is disabled.
For a 300KB SVG file, it generates a bitmap 1.4-2.5MB PDF.
The same happens with the following command:

inkscape --file=cmos_capacitor.svg --export-ignore-filters --export-area-drawing --without-gui --export-pdf=output.pdf

However, in windows 0.91 (last stable installer) the exporting process behaves correctly,
generating a standard vectorial PDF.

[Hachmann (marenhachmann)]

Tested (export and import via GUI) on Ubuntu 16.04 base, can't reproduce.
The pdf *is* indeed 1.4 MB, but it does contain vector data, when I open it again with Inkscape (which takes minutes to load, for some weird reason).

[fgr1986 (fernando-garca)]

Hi Hachmann.
IF you zoom the pdf image, (at least in my evince) it appears a bitmap file.
However, the inkscape on windows produces a standard vectorized PDF of 66.2KB.

[jazzynico (jazzynico)]

Tested on Windows XP (32-bit) with lp:inkscape/0.92.x rev. 15302. The SVG document opens correctly, but Inkscape crashes when trying to save it as PDF.

GDB backtrace:
Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
0x68e15dd8 in ?? () from d:\dev\Inkscape\0.92.x\inkscape\libcairo-2.dll

[fgr1986 (fernando-garca)]

Also tested on 14.04 Inkscape 0.92.0 15301 (snap build).
The same problem occurs: rasterized output of 1.4MB instead the 66kB vectorized file.

[Nathan Lee (nathan.lee)]

Replicated-ish. Note that in versions before 0.91, it fails to save as pdf entirely. However 0.91-1 (windows 10) seems to export well

Minimizing the file, the issue is a clipped pattern, which produces:
- large raster images for masks (in this case, the masks don't seem to do anything anyway)
- relatively large pdf file (as a result of the raster images)
- takes a lot of memory to open in a pdf reader or import into Inkscape
- re-import to Inkscape doesn't show pattern properly

I confirm that everything else is vector though, and since these masks don't seem to do anything, your PDF viewer should display these files as vector (barring memory usage issues). I confirm that opening the file in a PDF viewer, it was all vector too.

Anyhow, closing as part of bug migration of issues to GitLab.

I've opened a new issue https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inbox/-/issues/3913 (PDF export of clipped pattern adds raster image (large file size)) to track the addition of the raster images, which hopefully should be satisfactory.

I haven't investigated the crash in comment 4 closer (since it doesn't seem to be replicated anymore in master, but there is a crash related to memory use when exported this svg, see https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape/-/issues/86

Thanks for reporting this bug, please feel free to file new bugs about the issues you're seeing at
http://inkscape.org/report