Getting vector graphics from dia to MS Office



* Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie> [2004-04-14 15:50]:

PNG (Portable Network Graphic) is a raster (aka bitmap) graphics format.
PNG is not vector capable.  http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/
Perhaps you are thinking of SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics)?
http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/

I was misinformed.. someone told me PNG could be either, but in
searching around, you seem to be correct.  Though the page you posted
does not state it outright.  These links below show an excellent
summery of features of different formats:

http://luxor-xul.sourceforge.net/talk/jug-nov-2002/slides.html#svg-41

and the middle of this page:

http://amath.colorado.edu/computing/graphics/understand_fmts.html

What doesn't work:

It seems that if I want to export a dia-gram to a vector graphic that
can be imported into directly Word, my only choice is EPS; which has
some problems.  It cannot be viewed on the screen.  The only reason I
would ever use Word is for delivering to professors who want to view
and annotate the document in Word.  Exported CGM files have some
problems with colors.

What works: (best?)

What I've discovered is the best way to get a dia-gram into a
Microsoft Office tool is to export it to EPS, then using ImageMagick
to convert it to the Macintosh PICT format.  Word imports the PICT
format quite nicely, and it remains vector throughout the process, and
I can scale the image w/out preserving proportion if I want.

The only uglyness is that the text and lines seem to soften as though
they were anti-aliased.  I'm not sure why that is.  If anyone knows of
an imagemagick option that might improve this, please post.



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