I have been trying to use Inkscape to prepare artwork graphics for my scientific papers. I use LaTeX, and I need my figures to be prepared as high-quality Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) images. The work order is as follows. First, I plot parts of my figure using matplotlib and save them in EPS format. Second, I launch Inkscape and import the EPS files. Using Inkscape I compose a figure, leaving needed objects, killing unneeded, and adding some markups. So I used to do when I worked with CorelDraw in Windows, but now I work in Linux.

Unfortunately, Inkscape damages EPS files: it changes the colors and does not save all the objects. Over last years I tried to search for a solution, but I cannot find that people complained. The complaints (found on the Web) are related to something like "incorrect font rendering" when exporting from svg to eps or back. (For me this is not a problem - the text always can be represented as curves).

I currently work in Mandriva Linux 2010 and use Inkscape version 0.47 r22583 (Jan 14 2010). Somewhere I read that such problems could be caused by some outdated versions of cairo - mine is 1.9.14. I spend a lot of effort to build newer cairo (1.12.14), but I am still far from the purpose. I got confused in 32 and 64-bit libraries coexisting in my system...

I would be very grateful to anyone who has similar problems and, may be, advanced further towards the solution. Let me illustrate the problem.

(1) Here are the three eps images I would like to combine in one figure:




(2) Here is what I get after importing the images in Inkscape and saving in SVG format. Note color and resolution distortion. Also, I draw three red circles around the feature of interest.



(3) Here is what I get when I export this figure to EPS file. One can notice that one of the three red circles gone: only two circles left!


Thanks a lot!

Didn't look much into the disappearing circle yet, but the resolution problems are most probably caused by
that the original embedded images are 100/100 pixels sized and scaled differently in horizontal and vertical directions,
making the raster image's pixels not fitting on the pixel grid, and maybe exporting wasn't at n*90 dpi resolution in inkscape.

Thank you. I am going to think in this direction and to experiment.
By the way, today I encountered an interesting page discussing somewhat similar problems and ways to solve them:
"Converting an SVG to EPS"
http://waterprogramming.wordpress.com/2 ... vg-to-eps/

However: I have never seen on the Web any discussions about objects visible in SVG that disappear after Inkscape exports the image to EPS. This effect is unpredictable, but very frequent. Very typical is disappearance of the whole row with the tick labels from a graph axes. I once tried to understand the XML structures of the SVG files: I suspected that objects can become "invisible" in EPS dependent on the order of the paths in the XML tree. I did not find any such dependence.
I installed Inkscape in Windows. The distortion and disappearance effects in EPS files in Windows precisely repeat those in Linux.