Comment 79 for bug 168610

Thought some of my observations might be useful to this discussion.

I have been using Inkscape and also rsvg-convert in an attempt to convert a few thousand SVGs to PDF.

When I open certain PDFs in Illustrator I get this message:
"An unknown shading type was encountered" and the offending shapes are un-editable "images" with a clipping mask over them.

There are two circumstances that result in problems for me.

1) A gradient with only 2 stops.

In the following example I have duplicated the offset="0" stop which fixes things and means that if I convert the SVG to PDF the resulting shape is filled with this gradient and works fine. Without the duplicate declaration, the gradient is converted to an un-editable image with a clipping mask.

Code: Select all
      <linearGradient id="ian_symbols_b8a58aafc1f12e74492e9e865b7f569b" gradientUnits="userSpaceOnUse" x1="113.7275" y1="136.9414" x2="197.0259" y2="136.9414">
        <stop offset="0" style="stop-color:#927A62" id="stop1472" />
        <stop offset="0" style="stop-color:#927A62" id="stop1472_dup" />
        <stop offset="1" style="stop-color:#93866F" id="stop1474" />
      </linearGradient>

2) A shape that has an opacity that is less than "1". I don't know how to fix this one and still maintain the look of the original. I understand that there are some issues with transparency and the PDF format, but obviously the full AI version of the PDF format these days supports transparency.

So, could inkscape/rsvg-convert/cairo handle these conversions better, or is there something I can do with the original SVG code to make the opacity work ok in the final PDF?

Thanks