2004-05-31

Ah, the joy of exporting svg to raster, ready to print on to dead tree...

Firstly, export to png in sodipodi in win32 is broken, so after much hand waving and hacking about with printers (installing drivers for none existent wide format printers, printing to said printers to file, then using ghostview to open resulting postscript file, then converting into pdf...), nothing worked. It appeared 3 nights of work is all for naught!

Never fear, the penguin is near!

Rebooted into my debian install, used the slightly older version of sodipodi there to open the poster svg. Lo and behold! Its broken images and unknown fonts! Off I go to fix it all by hand, using fonts, strange and exotic, from places afar. And then it was done and done.

I held my breath, and exported to png...

There was a moment of suspense, when the world seem to hold its breath, as the export button was depressed... and remain depressed... fear crept into my heart... will it work?! will it die?! oh what shall be the fate of my labors?!

As soon as it began, it was over. The dialogue closed, and the world let out a long held sigh. I collapsed in relief over my cat, which then proceeded to craw my eyes out in an attempt to escape.

The result, 3 png with transparent backgrounds. Left and right halves in A3 size, and the complete piece in A2. At 300dpi, might files were produced. Files some 5000 pixels wide from head to toe, 7000 pixels from shoulder to shoulder. True giants to crash my measly computer into a smoking pool of melted silicon as it tries to manipulate the files into forms I desire.

Once I tamed the giants, I realized they had cute little pig tails. Well no, not really, but the proccess did produce some artifacts. Background decors are more pronounced, and gained a slightly 3D appearance. Buts that cool.

And so my adventures done, I alt-tabbed over to open office, where I resumed my favorite past time of sprouting absolute bull for software.

Ah, such is life...

Cheers!
Steve