Convert PDF to clean SVG?

pdf svg
DanRedux picture DanRedux · Apr 23, 2012 · Viewed 139.5k times · Source

I'm attempting to convert a PDF to SVG. However, the one I am using currently maps a path for every letter in every piece of text, meaning if I change the text in its source file, it looks ugly.

I was wondering what the cleanest PDF to SVG converter is, hopefully one that doesn't have a path for it's text areas that simply don't need one. As we know, PDF and SVG are fairly similar, so I assume there's some good converters out there.

Answer

Kurt Pfeifle picture Kurt Pfeifle · Apr 24, 2012

You can use Inkscape on the commandline only, without opening a GUI. Try this:

inkscape \
  --without-gui \
  --file=input.pdf \
  --export-plain-svg=output.svg

For a complete list of all commandline options, run inkscape --help.

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