[Solved] Using alternative eps-import filter under linux

[schluenz]

I'm using oo 2.3.1 under Linux (Scientific Linux 4/5 ~= RHEL). I'm having some problems with the pstoedit based EPS import filter and would like to use an alternative filter. As far as I can see, pstoedit is hard-coded in ieps-routines RenderAsEMF, but couldn't find an option changing the EPS import filter without recompiling oo.

Q: is there a way to tell oo NOT to use pstoedit but rather some other EPS-to-EMF conversion routine ?
OR: is it possible to disable EMF-support ? afaik that should invoke a EPS-to-PNG conversion via magick, which is good enough. [Well, I can drop a non-executable dummy pstoedit into my PATH, which actually seems to disable emf-support, but I would like to avoid that].

Any help appreciated !!

[acknak]

Obviously, you can use some other converter (if there is one) to make the EMF file, and then import that. I doubt there is any option for adjusting the import filter.

Are you sure you need to import the EPS figure? That is an unusual requirement.

[schluenz]

Obviously, you can use some other converter (if there is one) to make the EMF file, and then import that. I doubt there is any option for adjusting the import filter.

Are you sure you need to import the EPS figure? That is an unusual requirement.

well, maybe import is not exactly the right term. If I drag an eps-file into (eg) impress, oo apparently converts the eps-file into an emf-file, which finally gets embedded into the presentation. Unfortunately, the quality of the emfs is sometimes very poor (not oo's fault) and images tend to be skewed (some of the converting programs get the bounding boxes wrong). So I was hoping for a convenient workaround ... however, if there's no easy way to configure the import-filter, I'll stick to manual conversion.

Thanks anyway !

[acknak]

So you only want to display the EPS file.

Dealing with EPS files is problematic at best, and for Impress it's even more difficult. As far as I know, there is no point at all in using an EPS file in a presentation. Impress can't render the vector drawing and so all you'll ever see is the preview image. If the preview image was added by another application, it will probably be so low quality as to be unusable in a presentation.

In theory, converting the EPS to an EMF could preserve the vector information and give you a higher-quality display, but Impress cannot (yet) draw anti-aliased graphics, so it still won't look nice.

If I were you, I would simply convert the EPS files to images at an appropriate resolution for a screen (~1000 pixels max dimension), and insert that into the presentation. I use ImageMagick and Ghostscript for easy conversion of EPS to images.

If I really wanted the EPS files in the presentation, then I would use "epstool" to replace the preview images with ones specifically tailored to look good in the presentation.