I am trying to use Inkscape to edit a pdf file that contains formulas with greek letters. The pdf was created with a separate program, and the greek letters are in the Symbol font. When I use a pdf viewer such as Adobe Reader or Evince to view the pdf, the formulas show up with no problem. When I open the file with Inkscape, the wrong symbols show up. It makes no difference whether it is a pdf or eps file.

I can recreate this problem with the following steps on my machine (Ubuntu 10.04, Inkscape 0.48.1):

- open a new document in LibreOffice
- choose the Symbol font, type "gd" (this will show up as "gamma delta")
- go to File --> Export as PDF, click "Export"
- open the pdf file in Inkscape

When I do this, the greek letters show up as "delta alpha", not "gamma delta".

UPDATE
temporary workaround: use a separate program to convert to svg before opening in Inkscape

The solution that works best for me is to save the original figure in EPS format, then use Scribus to convert the EPS to SVG format. If I do this, then the correct symbols show up when I open the .svg file in Inkscape. Scribus is cross-platform.

FINAL UPDATE: the command line tool pstoedit also converts from PDF or EPS to SVG. This program keeps the symbols as text in the .svg file, (as opposed to Scribus, which converts all text to paths).

Welcome to the forum!

I'm glad you figured it out