I want to share an interesting post from Anna Hodgkinson on the gvSIG international mailing list about how to edit a gvSIG produced map layout on Inskcape using PDF format as an exchange format.

Dear Wolfgang, dear list,

I have been exporting maps from gvSIG and editing (fine-tuning) them later with Inkscape for a while now and never had any major problems.

My usual workflow is as follows:
– Create the map layout in gvSIG, do as much fine-tuning as possible before exporting, such as making sure the scalebar is set to the right Intervals etc., but don’t worry – you can do a lot of editing in Inkscape, so even rectangles in white that you might want to use to offset map elements against backgrounds can be changed etc. Make sure you set your margins and page size correct (Map – age setup)!!!

– Export as PDF (use the PDF button on the toolbar).

– Open Inkscape, and do “File – Import” – select the PDF you just created in gvSIG and import it. The page size should remain the same!

– In Inkscape, ungroup all elements – select all (either ctrl+a or “draw” a frame around all elements), then do “Object – Ungroup”. Repeat this several times, you will have to select all objects again before repeatedly ungrouping. Make sure you “draw” your selection frame around the entire batch of objects to be ungrouped – click on them and you may accidentally move them!

Pay attention to the scalebar: You can, after about 3-4 “ungrouping” actions unmerge the numbers from the bar to make it “look nice”, same with all sorts of map elements, change colours, line weights etc.

You can either “mask” any vector data that, through ungrouping, has been exploded and now sticks out beyond the margins, or (cheap and easy) draw white, frameless rectangles in the margins to cover them up.

– In Inkscape do “File – save as” and save as PDF. When closing Inkscape you will be prompted to save the drawing as .svg as well – it’s worth doing so, as you will be able to do further editing in case you need to.

I hope this helps. I have been using this methodology for over a year now, and find it very simple and good to use!

Please refer to the manual for editing maps in Inkscape, recently published by Oxford Archaeology [1] for details on the above procedure!

All the best,

Anna

[1] http://library.thehumanjourney.net/366/

Quite interesting, isn’t it? Well is not just as straight forward as having the possibility to direct render a map layout on SVG, but well is better than nothing and Anna has shown a succesful use case.