Illustrator SVG import renders text objects with overlapping characters

Bug #480222 reported by Wolf
6
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Inkscape
Confirmed
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

I did generate some svg files by gnuplot. Super-Illu opens them properly, inkscape sort of stuffes (or overlaps) the last one or two (and sometimes first one or two) characters in a text box. Deleting one or two characters at the end (and sometimes beginning) expands the text to a proper appearence.

BTHW: My extremely beloved "fit page size to selection" does not work in this file either.

0.46, Mac OS X 10.4.11

Tags: importing svg
Revision history for this message
Wolf (drechsel) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Wolf (drechsel) wrote :

I found this issue occurs in cooperation with Illustrator.app. I use it as due to a bug in inkscape 0.46 lines are not shown as they should be. So I open the file in Illustrator, resize it, save it and then start working in inkscape. Probabely, as the 0.46 bug will be fixed in 0.47, this issue will not occur. Therefore - maybe just wait…

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su_v (suv-lp) wrote :

1) The file you attached says:
<!-- Generator: Adobe Illustrator 11 Build 196, SVG Export Plug-In . SVG Version: 6.0.0 Build 78) -->
and further down:
 <svg:desc
   id="desc44870">Produced by GNUPLOT 4.2 patchlevel 5</svg:desc>
Are there no other SVG export options in GnuPlot to create a plain SVG version that is more compatible with Inkscape and other non-proprietary software? Or - if you need to touch it first in Illustrator - is it important for you to keep the adobe-specific elements in the SVG file? Or could you export to a format similar to the 'Plain SVG' in Inkscape?

2) The text edit issue is happens where the string isn't *one* string but comprised of several <tspans> elements used to position and/or style parts or single characters of the string. - After changing the font of all text objects to one available on my system I can edit the street names without above described horizontal overlaps of some of the characters although technically the text objects are still composed of multiple 'tspan' elements. I don't know if the issue is aggravated by the additional Illustrator <svg:switch> element wrapped around every <svg:txt> element combined with a <svg:foreignObject>... or basically introduced by the original GnuPlot formatting.

3) the 'fit page size to selection' issue is probably due to the 'viewBox' attribute which is known to cause problems in Inkscape 0.46 and has been improved in Inkscape 0.47 (e.g. bug #167682).

Overall - looking at the SVG source of you attached file I am not surprised that this doesn't work that well in Inkscape 0.46. Could you attach the SVG file you first created by exporting from GnuPlot?

tags: added: importing svg
Changed in inkscape:
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
su_v (suv-lp) wrote :

partly reproduced with Inkscape 0.46+devel r22566 on OS X 10.5.8

The text edit issue seems related to the changes that Illustrator adds to the file - the original GnuPlot version imports without issues in current prerelease builds and allows to edit the text objects without overlapping issues (possibly due to the different font metrics of the 'ArialMT' font that Illustrator used and even embedded into CSS style section of the SVG file)

Changed in inkscape:
status: Incomplete → Confirmed
summary: - when importing from gnuplot, last one or two (and sometimes first one or
- two) characters in a text overlap
+ Illustrator SVG import renders text objects with overlapping characters
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