Allow pdf+latex export to make use of textext latex-sourcecode

Do you know if 'Tex Text' is still actively developed or maintained? (It's latest stable version (0.4.4) was based on Inkscape 0.46, and as far as I know (not using it myself), it doesn't work out-of-the-box with newer Python and/or Inkscape versions. The development repository hasn't seen recent activity either).

Seems to work fine (under Linux at least) on 0.48. I am using a version from the repository on bitbucket (https://bitbucket.org/pv/textext). (One small issue is that in Ubuntu Lucid, pstoedit is currently broken -- always segfaults).

But maybe just incorporating textext's functionality directly into Inkscape would make sense... (where it uses the code from the existing LaTeX renderer extension).

I would also very much like this feature in Inkscape.

This would also make it possible to resize the resulting image from the LaTeX document without affecting the size of the LaTeX text in the image. Furthermore, it would be possible to change the font type and size without having to regenerate the image.

I have made a very crude patch/hack that works for me, but I'm afraid my code is not very good. (I'm unfamiliar with Inkscape's internals.) However, the fact that I managed to do it shows that it should be very easy for a programmer that is familiar with Inkscape.

textext seems unsopported for latest versions of Inkscape. At least for windows, one needs to edit its source and add some libraries to make it work.

Still, such a feature would be highly appreciated. Right now, the workflow for including SVGs in PDF-LaTeX documents (using the Save-As-PDF feature of inkscape) produces high quality vector drawings. textext can be used to include formulars (often just labelling symbols) with the same font and format as in the LaTeX-document.

However, an elegant way of also ensuring the same font size as in the LaTeX-document would be highly appreciated. Håkon, would you like to maybe publish your code here, so others can use it or maybe include it in Inkscape?

I'm sorry, I forgot about this bug. I have lost my modifications, but I'll try to replicate what I had and post it here.

I've thought a bit more about this and I think the best thing to do is to make a new extension that does the desired PDF+LaTeX export. Here is the spec that I'm going to implement:

Inkscape Output extension: TexText -> PDF + LaTeX
-------------------------------------------------

INTRODUCTION:
The purpose of this extension is to export TexText objects as real LaTeX code, not just paths. This way, the typeface can be changed from the LaTeX document without having to regenerate all the TexText objects inside the figure in Inkscape. It also ensures consistency with the fonts used in the rest of the LaTeX document, and furthermore, it is possible to cross-reference other parts of the document from within the figure.

PREREQUISITES AND LIMITATIONS:
* Scale factor in TexText objects must be 1.25.
* LaTeX code in TexText objects must be in horizontal mode or math mode. I.e. no $$...$$ or \[...\], or whole paragraphs of text are allowed. For simulated displayed math, use $\displaystyle ...$.
* Only rotations, flat fill color and opacity are exported to LaTeX. All other effects and transformations are ignored.

CONVERSION ALGORITHM:
Make a temporary copy of the SVG drawing. All operations below are on the copy.
for each TexText object OBJ do
 Find basepoint coordinates of OBJ.
 Create text object containing the original LaTeX code.
 Move text object inside OBJ group.
 Substitute x and y attributes of the text with basepoint coordinates.
 In the style attribute of the text, replace fill, opacity and fill-opacity with the ones from the OBJ group.
 Delete the style attribute for the OBJ group.
 Delete group containing paths.
end for
Save as PDF+LaTeX with "Export area as page" checked.
Delete temporary copy of SVG drawing.

FIND BASEPOINT ALGORITHM:
Prefix LaTeX code with "\rlap{\rule{.00001pt}{.00001pt}}".
Regenerate TexText object.
Enter group containing the paths.
Return the final two numbers of the matrix in the transform attribute of the path object corresponding to the inserted invisible dot.

And here is the result. Unpack the two extension files to ~/.config/inkscape/extensions and restart Inkscape. This will add an entry in Extensions > Export. Please note the assumptions and limitations noted in the spec in my previous post.

Let me know if it doesn't work.

This is my first contribution to an open source project, so I'm not sure how to proceed from here. All comments are welcome!

I updated the extension to control file output better. The script will now show a save dialog for the pdf file. I have tested the script under Linux with pdf2svg installed. It will probably not work on other platforms (yet) since the file chooser depends on GTK.

The new extension now has its own Launchpad home page. See

https://launchpad.net/svgtextext-to-pdflatex