Export
The export extension has changed quite substantially in JessyInk version 1.5. While before JessyInk presentations were exported directly in Inkscape from the file that had been used to create them, an intermediate step of exporting the presentation to a new file using FireFox is now required. The reason for this change is that in the old way of exporting a JessyInk presentation all the effects, transitions and other changes to the image that are coded in JavaScript had to be reimplemented in Python. This limited the flexibility of JessyInk and made it very hard to maintain.
To export your presentation, follow the steps outlined below:
- Create a JessyInk presentation in Inkscape.
- Load your presentation in Firefox. At the moment, Firefox is the only borwser that implements the functions required for the export feature to work.
- Press the "e" key to start the conversion of your presentation to an svg image with one layer for every effect or transition. The result will be offered as a download. Please note that Firefox might save the resulting file under some seemingly random name (most likely ending in .part). Of course you are welcome to change this name. However, even with the original name the file should open in Inkscape, although you may have to tell your operating system which programme to open it with.
- Open the new image in Inkscape.
- Select save as from the file menu.
- Enter a file name and choose the location where you want to save the exported presentation.
- Select "JessyInk zipped pdf or png output (*.zip)" as the file type.
- Click the save button.
- The export dialog box shown below will appear. In this dialog box you can select the format (either PDF or PNG) and the resolution. With the PDF format the resolution refers to the resolution of the effects that are rendered to a bitmap image for the export (e.g. blur).
- Click the ok button. Please be patient. Depending on the number of slides and effects, the export may take a while. After the message "document saved" apeared in the status bar, you should find a zip file in the location you chose containing one file for each slide and effect in the format you specified.
Using the intermediate step of creating a new image in the browser first means that the same code is used for the effects on screen as for the export. Even if new effects, transitions or other features are added to JessyInk, the code for the export extension will stay the same. Dialog box of the export extension. Graphical representation of the new export.
Dialog box of the export extension.
Graphical representation of the new export.
Could you explain what do you exactly mean by loading the presentation in firefox? what file should be loaded (opened?) with firefox and what is the shortcut e for? when I press e in firefox when the svg is open nothing happens.
Hi arasbm:
By "loading the presentation in firefox" I wanted to express that the SVG file you created in Inkscape (with JessyInk? installed) should be opened in Firefox (e.g. by choosing "Open File..." in the "File"-menu). Once the file is opened, you should press the "e"-key (without pressing Ctrl or any other modifier keys). This should open a new window (you may have to confirm that JessyInk? is allowed to open a new window) with a new (exported) SVG. You can then save the new SVG image and proceed as described above.
Should you have any trouble, please let me know.
Cheers, Hannes
Problem with cutes in title of template
Hi Bazzaaa:
Please send me an example file and I will look into the issue. It would also be helpful to know which platform (operating system, version of inkscape, version of JessyInk?) you are operating on.
Cheers, Hannes
I can confirm that while the svg presentation is open in firefox, pressing the "e" -key (yes, only that key without pressing anything else) does not do anything.
Mukhtar
I fail on this step: > Enter a file name and choose the location where you want to save the exported presentation. > Select "JessyInk? zipped pdf or png output (.zip)" as the file type.
There is no such a filetype when "Save as..." in FireFox? - just these: Web Page Web Page only SVG Text files All
Jessy 1.5.2 Ubuntu 10.04 Firefox 3.6.8
Hi mukhtar.ullah,
sorry for the late reply. Could you supply an example file that shows this problem. It might also be that you have Firefox blocking pop-up windows without asking whether you want them to be displayed. As the export is opened in a new window, such functions might interfere.
Cheers, Hannes
Hi aneganov:
By the time you get to this step, you should be back in Inkscape. See step "Open the new image in Inkscape". I am sorry the new export process is somewhat cumbersome. It was the only way I saw to keep the effort manageable and the program flexible.
Cheers, Hannes
I tried this, but have two problems with this approach:
Ciao, Juve
Hi Juve,
since we discussed the issues already via email, I just wanted to thank you for your interest and participation.
Cheers, Hannes
Hi Hannes,
when I open the final zip file with adobe acrobat it says "repaired file" and then displays the first pdf within the zip. Currently I don't see any option to "run" the slideshow within acrobat reader. Do you have anything in mind to stitch the single pdfs together into just one file, which one can run as the final presentation on any computer?
thanks a lot for your efforts; this is certainly one of the most valuable extension to inkscape!!!
Robin
Hi Robin,
unfortunately, I did not find a cross-platform way to export the presentations to a multi-page pdf, which could be viewed directly in any pdf reader. This would of course be the preferred way. As you mentioned yourself, the way to go at the moment is to export to a zip file, extract the archive and then stitch the separate pdf files together to get one multi-page pdf. The way to do the stitching depends on you platform and available tools. Adobe Acrobat (not Acrobat Reader) should be able to do the stitching. On Ubuntu, there are several tools that do the job. Last time I used "pdfjoin" (contained in the package "pdfjam").
Let me know, if you found something that worked for you. If you can't find anything, let me know what your platform is and I'll try to find something.
Cheers, Hannes
Hi Hannes, maybe you could add a check button with "try to stitch single pdfs together ghostscript installed?" and then run gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=myfile.pdf -f myfile1.pdf myfile2.pdf myfile3.pdf myfile4.pdf
That would make it at least for the general linux world much easier. I remember that I wrote my thesis with latex on windows and there was something like ghostcript as well. Don't know about mac.
Hi Robin,
thanks for the suggestion. I tried using ghostscript before and I just tried it again. However, the output I get is usually quite distorted. There seems to be problems with gradients and transparency. Maybe it's just me. Does it work on your machine? Could you provide me with the result you get for e.g. the showcase file (just the first few slides would do)?
The other option I was looking into is modifying the normal cairo-based PDF output extension Inkscape ships with. From what I read cairo supports multi-page PDF, so it would just be a matter of stepping through the layers. Unfortunately, the PDF had already quite a few features added to it, so I either have to make sure the layer-by-layer option does not interfere with any of the features, or I have to duplicate the output extension, remove some of the features and put the layer-by-layer option in.
Cheers, Hannes
Hi Hannes,
did you ever look or contact your sister projects: http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Tools#Inkscape_Slide Parts of them state that they were able to create multipage pdfs One thing which might be usefull (and was added to inkslide) is http://pybrary.net/pyPdf/. on the website there is some code which seems to be writing to a multifile pdf.
cheers
robin
Hi Robin,
thanks a lot for the comment. I remember playing with pyPdf about a year ago. It has a lot going for it. It is purely Python, so it could perceivably be shipped with JessyInk? and it creates multi-page pdfs, which are probably the most requested feature. The problem was, that the pdfs did not display well across different platforms and readers.
I thought that there was little activity with pyPdf since the last release is from September 2008, but I just checked github and it seems that there is quite some development. So I guess I'll have to try a recent version and see if things improved.
Thanks again, Hannes
I tested pyPdf again. However, I got errors with some of the PDFs created by Inkscape. I don't know whether this is an Inkscape or a pyPdf problem, but it seems that it would not be a good idea to use pyPdf for the JessyInk? export at the moment.
Q1. Is there a way to script 'firefox opens the svg / someone presses e / accept the download / close' ? Q2. Is there a way to export to 'jessyink zip..' from inkscape command line interface ?
Q1: I have not found a way to do that so far. There might be a way, but I am not that familiar with scripting firefox. What you need would be a javascript engine to process the file (you don't really need the rendering, although the engine should have a window object). I know that you can get the javascript engines firefox and the one chrome uses separately, but I have not yet tried using them without the browser.
Q2: That one is way easier. Your best bet is to modify the python script used by the export extension to supply it with the input file directly. That should be fairly easy to do (you might need to supply it with the namespaces, but appart from that, you should be fine). This script then calls Inkscape to convert the file. You could even add some code to fuse the resulting pdfs.
Let me know, how things go.
As I understand, with JessyInk? you can make a presentation, but till now there are problems to make a pdf-presentation as the different slides are not merged togeter.
Currently the slides are not merged. The reason for this is that I have not yet been able to find a cross-platform way of merging the slides that I could distribute with JessyInk?. On each of the major platforms (Linux, OSX and Windows) there exist several ways of merging pdf-files, so I figured that this is not a big problem. I admit though that it is an inconvenience for the user. If anyone has knows of a suitable cross-platform way of merging pdf-files, I will be more than happy to incorporate it.
Hi hannes, Thank you for your time and answer. Jessyink is getting popular in my company, but I can tell this manual export to pdf is a show stopper for some users. I did some scripting already to fuse the pdf, I will try what you suggest for Q2, but unfortunately it wont happen soon :( DB
I have been looking into the issue a little bit more. The first step of the export I have not made much progress. For the second step I have tried to use pypdf, which is a pdf library written in python. Unfortunately, I encountered two errors with the pdfs that Inkscape produced from the 1.5.5 showcase file. I already contacted the maintainer of the library, but I don't know how hard it will be to fix the problems. I also started looking into pdftk, which apparently is based on the itext library. since this library is written in Java, I would think it should not be too hard to get it to run across platforms.
Should you be successful in your attempts, please let me know.