SVG to PDF on a shared linux server - linux

I have a website which uses SVG for an interactive client side thingamabob. I would like to provide the option to download a PDF of the finished output. I can pass the final SVG output back to the server, where I want to convert to PDF, then return it to the client for download.
This would need to work on a headless shared linux server, where installation or compilation is either an enormous pain, or impossible. The website is PHP, so the ideal solution would be PHP, or use software that's easily installed on a shared webserver. Python, perl and ruby are available, along with the usual things you might expect on a linux box. Solutions that involve cairo, scripting inkscape, or installation more complex than 'FTP it up' are probably out. Spending large amounts of money are also out, naturally. As this is a shared server, memory and/or CPU hungry solutions are also out, as they will tend to get killed; this more or less rules out Batik.
The nearest that I've got so far is this XSL transform which I can drive from PHP and then squirt the resulting postscript through ps2pdf (which is already installed). The only problem with this is that it doesn't support SVG paths - if it did, it would be perfect.
There are a bunch or related questions on StackOverflow, all of which I've read through, but they all assume that you can either install stuff, spend money, or both.
Does anyone have an off-the-shelf solution to this, or should I just spend some downtime trying to add paths support to that XSL transform?
Thanks,
Dunc

I stumbled across TCPDF today which would have been perfect for this, had I known about it at the time. It's just a collection of pure PHP classes, no external dependencies for most things.
It can build PDF's from scratch and you can include pretty much anything you want in there, including SVG (amongst many, many other things), as shown in these examples:
http://www.tcpdf.org/examples.php
Main project page is here:
http://www.tcpdf.org/
Sourceforge page is here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/tcpdf/

You can use Apache FOP's free Batik SVG toolkit which has a transcoder api to transform SVG to PDF.
download link
You will need to write a tiny bit of java. There are code examples here – note you will need to set the transcoder to org.apache.fop.svg.PDFTranscoder instead of Java.
You should be able to do this without installing anything on your machine – just drag the jars on there and run a script. I quote:
All other libraries needed by Batik are included in the distribution. As a consequence the Batik archive is quite big, but after you have downloaded it, you will not need anything else.

have you looked at imagemagick? I suspect you also need ghostscript to complete the loop, which might make installation difficulty and performance a problem.

I'd suggest giving princexml a try, they provide various addons (including one for PHP) and can output PDF from SVG/HTML/XML.

i have used TCPDF (http://www.tcpdf.org/) in many projects and it work in almost every use case.
Here is the example of SVG: https://tcpdf.org/examples/example_058/
and following is the code which can help you:
$pdf->ImageSVG($file='images/testsvg.svg', $x=15, $y=30, $w='', $h='', $link='http://www.tcpdf.org', $align='', $palign='', $border=1, $fitonpage=false);
$pdf->ImageSVG($file='images/tux.svg', $x=30, $y=100, $w='', $h=100, $link='', $align='', $palign='', $border=0, $fitonpage=false);

Related

Producing PDF files in NodeJS - simpler than puppeteer/chromium but a bit less basic than low level libraries

I'd like to be able to produce PDF files in NodeJS.
Currently, we use puppeteer. We need to produce highly designed documents and so puppeteer/chromium gives me the ability to create a complex layout in HTML with the added benefit of also having the HTML version of the file.
It's great for relatively small documents where design is key.
The problem is when I try to produce long report documents. These documents do not require elaborate design. These are pretty much just a header with some information, and then a simple table with lots of records that stretch far as the eye can see, so they tend to be large. Like, really really large.
When I try using puppeteer for that, well pretty much just crashes and burns because loading such huge layouts into the underlying browser is just too much.
Currently I do "stitching". I create the document by having puppeteer create the doc in parts, and then I connect all those "doclets" into one using PDFKit.
But then I have problems like when one "doclet" ends and a new one begins, there are blank lines. (partially empty pages for no good reason from the perspective of a customer viewing it)
What I'm looking for is a library that has basic layout functionality but that doesn't use a browser (or perhaps uses something lightweight).
Problem is that libraries like PDFkit and pdf-lib seem to be too low level.
I'm going to literally have to "draw" the documents by telling it where exactly the text should be.
If I want tables, I'm going to straight up have to draw rectangles and stuff.
Having to create all of this manually would be a nightmare.
All I want is the ability to create simple layouts (tables, titles, text wrapping, background color) without having to use a library that just launches chromium.
Please, let me know if you know of any such option.
Thanks in advance!
What I tried:
PDFkit/pdf-lib - too low level. Unless I'm getting something wrong, there doesn't seem to be a way to create word wrapped layouts with basic tables.
jsPDF doesn't seem to be able to use the HTML functionality on the server(I think to get it to work I'd have to let it use a browser...? if so, doesn't really help).
Puppeteer/other libraries that pilot a browser - well, it uses a browser so a no-go for large docs.
Praying to Odin - No luck so far.

Is there any way converting a PDF to jpeg with golang?

I am currently rewriting my "old" Python-based Chatbots into golang.
One issue I came across was that I can´t convert a PDF into jpeg. Which I´d like to do so I can send it into a chat easily.
Already tried this with bimg (did not work at all) and imagemagick (gopkg.in/gographics/imagick.v3/imagick) as provided in this answer to another thread: "https://stackoverflow.com/a/47520596/7502507"
imagick.Initialize()
defer imagick.Terminate()
mw := imagick.NewMagickWand()
defer mw.Destroy()
mw.ReadImage(pdf)
mw.SetIteratorIndex(0) // This being the page offset
mw.SetImageFormat("jpg")
mw.WriteImage(image)
It does not produce a jpg at all, it just gives me the error
ERROR_POLICY: attempt to perform an operation not allowed by the security policy `PDF' # error/constitute.c/IsCoderAuthorized/408
How can I make this work? I can´t seem to edit the security settings for this.
Any help is appreciated!
I've been through the same issue and din't find any pure Golang solution.
Not a pure Golang solution, but this works flawlessly which uses cgo internally. Underlying library is Pdfium which is a C++ library, developed by Google and used in Chrome.
After a lot of research, I discovered that Pdfium was the best in class in terms of speed, robustness, license requirements and reliability.
To improve overall performance of the operation, I've ended up with this encoder as Golang's image encoders aren't geared towards performance and are slow.

Libraries for text manipulation

So...
I plan on doing an animation that pulls all the text from the screen to the middle and lets it pulse like a heart. For that I checked if I'm able to manipulate whole Strings and Chars the way I'm able to manipulate circles, for example. I found the libraries Nexttext and Fontastic, but those seem to be outdated, therefore I can't use them with Processing 3.0. Than there is the library Geomerative, which I manged to install through Processings library manager, but this one yields the error "duplicate libraries", which I can't find a , for me understandable, workaround for. I'm also using minim, since I combine the pulse with music input, minim works fine though.
Thus I'm asking if anyone here has an idea on how to fix this error, make the outdated libraries run or maybe someone has an alternative way/library to manipulate text.
Apparently the processing forum is not that active, hence I'm asking here, there was one suggestions tho, that I should search for similar Java libraries, which I yet have to do.
What exactly do you mean when you say you want to pull text from the screen? Do you mean you want to get text from another application and copy it into Processing? Or are you just talking about doing something inside the Processing window?
If you're just talking about manipulating text within the Processing window, then I'm not sure why you need a library for this. Processing has several functions that allow you to draw text, change its font, size, positioning, etc.
Anyway, the issue you've encountered is a known bug. Looks like the only solution for now is to use an old version of Processing. You can download them from the same place you downloaded Processing 3.
Both Geomerative and Fontastic work with Processing 3.2.3
Bare in mind is the bug Kevin mentioned.
However, the only issue I had was compiling examples that had this line:
import processing.opengl.*;
Simply remove or comment this line and the example should compile

Image size optimisation in Linux

There is a Yahoo "Smush.it" service that allow to optimise image size.
I am looking for alternative way to reach the same goal using Linux application.
A lot of images need to processed and uploading them manually one by one seems not a good idea.
How such can be done in Linux ?
For jpegs I use JPEGmini and from what I tested it's the one with the best results keeping the same visible image quality while reducing a lot of the size, they have a server version for Linux which is not cheap and I never used.
There's also Mozilla's mozjpeg which you can use directly from the terminal, but it also reduces image quality.
In some tests I did, mozjpeg gives smaller files (not much) than JPEGmini's, but with lower image quality.
If you need to reduce pngs, you could try Trimage or some of the alternatives listed on the same link.
Smush.it's FAQ lists all the tools they are using in their service.

Writing Color Calibration Data to a TIFF or PNG file

My custom homebrew photography processing software, running on 64 bit Linux/GNU, writes out PNG and TIFF files. These are to be sent to a quality printing shop to be made into fine art. Working with interior designers - it's important to get the colors just right!
The print shops usually have no trouble with TIFF and PNGs made from commercial software such as Photoshop. Even though i have the TIFF 6.0 specs, PNG specs, and other info in hand, it is not clear how to include color calibration data or implement color management system on linux. My files are often rejected as faulty, without sufficient error reports to make fixes.
This has been a nasty problem for a while for many. Even my contacts at the Hollywood postproduction studios are struggling with this issue. One studio even wanted to hire me to take care of their color calibration, thinking i was the expert - but no, i am just as blind and lost as everyone!
Does anyone know of good code examples, detailed technical information, or have any other enlightenment? Or time to switch to pure Apple?
Take a look at LittleCMS
http://www.littlecms.com/
This page has the code for applying it to TIFF
http://www.littlecms.com/newutils.htm
The basic thing you need to know is that Color profile data is something you need to store in the meta-data of the file itself.
There is a consultant called Charles Poynton who specialises in this area. I work for one of the post production studios you mention (albeit in london not hollywood), and have seen him speak on the subject a couple of times. His website contains a lot of the material he presents and you might find something of use there. He also has a book called Digital Video and HDTV Algorithms and Interfaces which is not as heavy as the title might suggest! While these resources might not answer your question directly, it might provide a spring board to other solutions.
More specifically, which libraries are you using to write the png and tif files - you mention they are homebrew, but how custom are they exactly? Postprocessing the images in an image manipulation program (such as ImageMagick or dcraw) might allow you to inject this information into the header more successfully.
Sorry, I don't have any specific answers, but maybe something that will point you a bit further in the right direction...
As a GNU/Linux user, you’ll want to consider DispcalGUI – http://dispcalgui.hoech.net/ – a GNOME-based GUI that centralizes color management, ICC profile management, and (crucially for your case) device calibration. It can talk to well-known pro- and mid-level hardware, e.g, i1, X-Rite, Spyder, etc.
But before you get into that – you say you are generating your files to spec; are you validating your output using a test suite specific to the format in question? If not, here are three to get you started:
imagetestsuite supports the well-known formats: https://code.google.com/p/imagetestsuite/w/list?can=1&q=
The Luminous* test suite is a JIRA plugin, if that’s your thing: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.luminouslead.plugin.jira.testsuite.LuminousTestSuite
FLOSS Decoder implementations often have one you can use, i.e. OpenJPEG – https://code.google.com/p/openjpeg/wiki/TestSuiteDocumentation
But even barring all of those, it seems like your problem is with embedded ICC data – which is two specs in one. First, there’s the host image-file format, and they all handle embedding differently (meaning the ICC data will likely look totally different when embedded in a TIFF than, say, a JPEG or WebP file). Second, there is the ICC spec itself. It is documented here: http://color.org/v4spec.xalter – and you may also want to look at the source for the aforementioned dispcalGUI, which includes a very legible and hackable ICC profile class in Python: http://sourceforge.net/p/dispcalgui/code/HEAD/tree/trunk/dispcalGUI/ICCProfile.py
Full disclosure: I have contributed to that very ICC profile class, to which I just linked in that last ¶
That’s the basics (many of which you have no doubt covered)... beyond that, if you post more information about what exactly is going wrong, I’d be interested to look it over. Good luck with it either way.
* NB. This project is unrelated to the long-standing photography website, “the Luminous Landscape”

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