FIG2SXD(1)

NAME
fig2sxd - utility to convert .fig to .sxd

SYNOPSIS
fig2sxd [-w] [-l(ine)w(idth)1 l] [-stylebase s] figfile sxdfile

DESCRIPTION
The program tries to convert the given file in xfig format into a sxd file for OpenOffice.org Draw. If figfile ends with .fig or .xfig and sxdfile is omitted, the output file will be named like figfile ending with .sxd instead of .(x)fig. Using - for figfile makes the program read from stdin so that it is possible to use

    pstoedit -f fig file.ps - | fig2sxd - file.sxd

to convert ps files. (For files with many objects you might want to use something like

    pstoedit -f 'fig:-startdepth 9999' file.ps - | fig2sxd - file.sxd

to get more layers; the output of pstoedit then is no longer a valid xfig file, but it makes the z ordering of the objects in OpenOffice.org Draw stay correct.) Using - for sxdfile makes the program write to stdout. With the -linewidth1 (or -lw1) option, the width of lines with thickness 1 in xfig can be set, unit is 1 cm. Using 0 here gives fine lines. Example:

    pstoedit -f 'fig:-startdepth 9999' file.ps - | fig2sxd -lw1 0 - file.sxd

With the -w option, out-of-specification values are only warnings but will be sanitized. With the -stylebase option, the prefix of the generated style names can be changed. This might be useful to prevent mixing styles from several converted figures that are joined in one OpenOffice.org document. The argument to -stylebase must consist of 4..255 alphanumeric characters.

DEFICIENCIES
Not all of the .fig objects are converted correctly: splines look quite similar, but are not exactly the same; text placement might be a little bit wrong, especially for very small font sizes; hatches look different in many cases; hollow arrows are not supported and replaced by their filled counterparts. There are various other things that could be improved.

It looks like OpenOffice.org cannot read xml attribute values longer than 64kB as they might appear for very long polygons/-lines. For unfilled polylines, fig2sxd therefore creates several smaller polylines of 500 points each and groups them together. Splitting an arbitrary filled polygon is not trivial and not implemented.

SEE ALSO
pstoedit(1), xfig(1) and http://fig2sxd.sourceforge.net/ (for updates).

AUTHOR
Program and manual page were written by Alexander Bürger <acfb@users.sourceforge.net>.