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Export PDF to SVG

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I’ve drawn a figure in $\rm \LaTeX$ using the TikZ. However, MathJax has no support for TikZ commands. Therefore, I have to generate an SVG figure from $\rm \LaTeX$ if I need to post it on Octopress.

I had followed the example on $\rm \TeX$–$\rm \LaTeX$ StackExchange. It worked for PNG and JPG files, but not SVG files. Since the quality of SVG files is the best, I would like to include use SVG.

I googled “latex export svg”, and saw pdf2svg in some websites, such as $\rm \LaTeX$ on Wikibooks. I then decided to install it. I followed the installation commands on its official page.

[owner@localhost ~]$ wget http://www.cityinthesky.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/
10/pdf2svg-0.2.2.tar.gz
[owner@localhost ~]$ tar -xzvf pdf2svg-0.2.2.tar.gz
[owner@localhost ~]$ cd pdf2svg-0.2.2
[owner@localhost ~/pdf2svg-0.2.2]$ ./configure
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking for a thread-safe mkdir -p... /bin/mkdir -p

... (output omitted)

checking for CAIRO... yes
checking for POPPLERGLIB... configure: error: Package requirements (poppler-glib
 >= 0.5.4) were not met:

No package 'poppler-glib' found

Consider adjusting the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable if you
installed software in a non-standard prefix.

Alternatively, you may set the environment variables POPPLERGLIB_CFLAGS
and POPPLERGLIB_LIBS to avoid the need to call pkg-config.
See the pkg-config man page for more details.

Googling “no package ‘poppler-glib’ found”, I found the second result useful. I installed the missing package and ran ./configure again, before proceeding to make.

[owner@localhost ~/pdf2svg-0.2.2]$ make
gcc -DPACKAGE_NAME=\"pdf2svg\" -DPACKAGE_TARNAME=\"pdf2svg\" -DPACKAGE_VERSION=\
"0.2.1\" -DPACKAGE_STRING=\"pdf2svg\ 0.2.1\" -DPACKAGE_BUGREPORT=\"David\ Barton
\ \<davebarton@cityinthesky.co.uk\>\" -DPACKAGE=\"pdf2svg\" -DVERSION=\"0.2.1\" 
-I.    -I/usr/include/cairo -I/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/gl
ib-2.0/include -I/usr/include/pixman-1 -I/usr/include/freetype2 -I/usr/include/l
ibpng12   -pthread -I/usr/include/gtk-2.0 -I/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/gtk-2.0/incl
ude -I/usr/include/atk-1.0 -I/usr/include/cairo -I/usr/include/gdk-pixbuf-2.0 -I
/usr/include/pango-1.0 -I/usr/include/gio-unix-2.0/ -I/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/u
sr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/glib-2.0/include -I/usr/include/pixman-1 -I/usr/include/fr
eetype2 -I/usr/include/libpng12   -I/usr/include/poppler/glib -I/usr/include/pop
pler -I/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/glib-2.0/include -I/usr/i
nclude/cairo -I/usr/include/pixman-1 -I/usr/include/freetype2 -I/usr/include/lib
png12    -g -O2 -MT pdf2svg-pdf2svg.o -MD -MP -MF .deps/pdf2svg-pdf2svg.Tpo -c -
o pdf2svg-pdf2svg.o `test -f 'pdf2svg.c' || echo './'`pdf2svg.c
pdf2svg.c: In function ‘main’:
pdf2svg.c:152:8: warning: incompatible implicit declaration of built-in function
 ‘free’ [enabled by default]
mv -f .deps/pdf2svg-pdf2svg.Tpo .deps/pdf2svg-pdf2svg.Po
gcc -I/usr/include/cairo -I/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/glib-
2.0/include -I/usr/include/pixman-1 -I/usr/include/freetype2 -I/usr/include/libp
ng12   -pthread -I/usr/include/gtk-2.0 -I/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/gtk-2.0/include
 -I/usr/include/atk-1.0 -I/usr/include/cairo -I/usr/include/gdk-pixbuf-2.0 -I/us
r/include/pango-1.0 -I/usr/include/gio-unix-2.0/ -I/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/
lib/i386-linux-gnu/glib-2.0/include -I/usr/include/pixman-1 -I/usr/include/freet
ype2 -I/usr/include/libpng12   -I/usr/include/poppler/glib -I/usr/include/popple
r -I/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/glib-2.0/include -I/usr/incl
ude/cairo -I/usr/include/pixman-1 -I/usr/include/freetype2 -I/usr/include/libpng
12    -g -O2   -o pdf2svg pdf2svg-pdf2svg.o -lcairo   -lgtk-x11-2.0 -lgdk-x11-2.
0 -latk-1.0 -lgio-2.0 -lpangoft2-1.0 -lpangocairo-1.0 -lgdk_pixbuf-2.0 -lcairo -
lpango-1.0 -lfreetype -lfontconfig -lgobject-2.0 -lglib-2.0   -lpoppler-glib -lg
object-2.0 -lcairo -lglib-2.0

I guess the reason for GCC to give me such a warning can be found in some questions posted on Stack Overflow.

  1. The first one.
  2. The second one.

I haven’t learnt C/C++, so I wouldn’t try #include <string.h> in pdf2svg.c.

I ignored the warning and continued the installation.

[owner@localhost ~]$ make install
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/owner/pdf2svg-0.2.2'
test -z "/usr/local/bin" || /bin/mkdir -p "/usr/local/bin"
  /usr/bin/install -c 'pdf2svg' '/usr/local/bin/pdf2svg'
/usr/bin/install: cannot create regular file `/usr/local/bin/pdf2svg': Permissio
n denied
make[1]: *** [install-binPROGRAMS] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/owner/pdf2svg-0.2.2'
make: *** [install-am] Error 2

I remembered that the --prefix= option used while running ./configure is /usr/local. Viewing the file permissions in that folder, I realized that I should follow the advice of an answer to an Ask Ubuntu question

[owner@localhost ~/pdf2svg-0.2.2]$ sudo make install
[sudo] password for owner: 
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/owner/pdf2svg-0.2.2'
test -z "/usr/local/bin" || /bin/mkdir -p "/usr/local/bin"
/usr/bin/install -c 'pdf2svg' '/usr/local/bin/pdf2svg'
make[1]: Nothing to be done for `install-data-am'.
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/owner/pdf2svg-0.2.2'

After installing pdf2svg from its source code, I can finally start using the tool.

pdf2svg input.pdf output.svg

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