I'm currently writing a client for a board game to be played over a network using Javascript and SVG. Inkscape is a great program for designing the sprites for the game, but I'm having trouble copying the raw code into my XML page. Namely, I want to position each object on the page by manipulating transform statements using Javascript, but Inkscape already uses them, and it's gunking up my file. I want to know if there's a way for Inkscape to automatically evaluate the piles of transformations done on each object so the paths' coordinates are in nice, low integers.

This is what I mean. I have this:

And I want it to become this:
... without me hand-changing the coordinates of the hundreds of sprites I have so far.

Inkscape Preferences -> Transforms: Store Transformation: Optimised.

Should get rid of the vast majority of the translate() statements, although there may be cases where using a translate() statement is the only way for Inkscape to do something, in which cases you would be out of luck.

Eg.
Groups may have to be ungrouped and then re-grouped to get rid of the transformations.

Hope that helps.

Thanks, but that option was already enabled, and it's still storing the transforms for the paths. Weird. I'd also tried creating a new layer and copying everything to that layer, but all that did was get rid of the transform on the layer.

I'm having the same problem with an image: http://github.com/l0b0/CERN-Central-Library-bookmark/blob/master/recto.svg

I've tried for a while to get rid of all the Inkscape junk - Default style values like text-anchor:start;, the irremovable <marker> definition, redundant attributes like @inkscape:document-units (why isn't @units good enough?), transforms and translates. The file is already much smaller than it used to be, but it's getting difficult to get any further without some serious XSLT.

l0b0 wrote:I've tried for a while to get rid of all the Inkscape junk

Junk? hmmm... Did you look at the different save/export formats of Inkscape? (Plain SVG, Optimized SVG)?
The latter is based on Scour, which can also be used as stand-alone python command line app. The next version of Inkscape will have a GUI for the various options of Scour, based on its current release.

Yep, but Scour messes up paths.

l0b0 wrote:Yep, but Scour messes up paths.

Try the latest version of Scour (outside of Inkscape). Alternatively you could test the Inkscape 0.48pre1 prerelease or a current development snapshot build - both available for win32, osx and linux (Ubuntu PPAs for nightly builds).