SVGs

Recently I've been working a lot with Inkscape, (one of) the SVG editor for Linux. It is a very nice editor, working very well.

Main problem is import and export. If you ask a company for their logo, they will send a raster image. If you ask for a vectorial format, you will get an EPS or a FreeHand file (or with some luck, an Adobe Illustrator file).

To convert these files to SVG is not easy. Well, if you have Adobe Illustrator, it will export SVG. If you have Corel Draw, it will export the eps file to SVG. If you have FreeHand you save it as Adobe Illustrator, and then you need it to save as SVG. This all if you are lucky and these programs do not mess the final SVG code. And, of course, if you have money to have them all installed. Thanks, friends, for your help!!

Export is simpler. People tend to ask for specific format but most of the time they can just work with PDF, and inkscape exports PDF. For specific formats you just need to have the application to import the PDF file, and save in the native format.

Now, when will we have SVG as a real portable format?