On Sat, 2012-01-21 at 01:42 +0100, Marco wrote:

On 2012-01-20 Kip Warner wrote:

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On Sat, 2012-01-21 at 01:22 +0100, Marco wrote:

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On 2012-01-20 Kip Warner wrote:

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So what does ConTeXt do when it typesets an \externalfigure? Does it always use inkscape, or only sometimes?

If the image type is supported by the TeX engine (jpeg, png, pdf, mps) it is directly included. SVG files inkscape is called to convert the SVG to PDF. For EPS images ghostscript is used:

strace results:

execve("/usr/bin/gs", ["gs", "-q", "-sDEVICE=pdfwrite", "-dNOPAUSE", "-dNOCACHE", "-dBATCH", "-dAutoRotatePages=/None", "-dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress", "-dEPSCrop", "-sOutputFile=m_k_i_v_graph.pdf", "graph.eps", "-c", "quit"], [/* 55 vars */])

Right, but since the average end user probably won't know that, doesn't that still suggest Inkscape be listed as a dependency?

No, not as dependency. As I mentioned before 99.9% of the system work fine without additional programs. You need inkscape only when you want to include SVG images. Having inkscape as a dependency means a huge bunch of data and disk space (inkscape incl. all dependencies like X,¿).

However, these external helpers (like ghostscript as well) should be listed as a recommendation [not dependency]), that way the user is notified that he/she might get a benefit installing these programs.

Marco

Understood. I've copied the package maintainer for a popular ConTeXt Ubuntu PPA. -- Kip Warner -- Software Engineer OpenPGP encrypted/signed mail preferred http://www.thevertigo.com