From the files listed at http://structure.harvard.edu/~andreas/map%20patterns/, I'm trying to convert the patterns to use within inkscape. It's a tedious process that I need help with.

I have followed a couple of tutorials to get advice:
http://ffaat.pointclark.net/blog/archiv ... scape.html
http://tucson-labs.com/articles/patterns-with-inkscape/

The starting pattern was #623 - Calcareous shale or marl.
It's a set of linework, which may not be designed ideally to repeat, but I'm going to assume it is, partly because I want to do the same set of actions on any pattern in that file and some of them can't be reduced or simplified.

Here's what I do:

• Import the .ai or .pdf version into inkscape
• Ungroup until I have 623 isolated, select and copy to new file (** why isn't there a "New from clipboard" feature?)
• Clean up the pattern a little bit
• Fit page dimensions to selection
• Object > Pattern > Objects to Pattern
• Open svg file in text editor, copy out pattern definition, and edit according to first ref above
• copy into /usr/share/inkscape/patterns/patterns.svg, restart inkscape

It's a lot of work, but wonder if there's an easier, maybe simpler way?
Also, the patterns suffer from the pattern bug, but I'm not going to worry too much about it.

Any ideas?

ben.

Here's a bunch of the patterns I've made so far, though the resulting code is large.

Would it be better (take less space, less memory) if I converted the patterns to bitmaps instead? Can they be jpegs?

Someone had some trouble with the file in the previous post: it's a replacement of the inkscape patterns.svg file (versions 0.46+ only I think).
You should make a backup copy of your existing patterns.svg file, then copy this one in its place.
Or, you could copy the relevant bits of code from the file into your existing patterns file (make a backup first).
Ben