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Re: [school-discuss] Bouncing ideas around:

Alex Chekholko wrote: 
This may be slightly off-topic, but the task you describe here is
easily done with ImageMagick.

http://www.imagemagick.org/script/formats.php

You can type "convert filename.svg filename.png".

If you want to convert a bunch of files:

	for f in ~/pictures_svf/*.svg; do
		f1=`basename $f .svg`
		convert -resize 16x16 $f $f1.png
	done

The other salient point is that SVG is a vector graphics format, while
PNG is a bitmap format, so you'll lose quite a bit of quality if
someone zooms in.

Alex

Hey that's great Alex! And to get us back on the topic, wouldn't it be great to have a posting of how to do this for OpenOffice that a school using FOSS could easily implement, something like:

1. Download Open ClipArt package: http://www.openclipart.org/downloads/index.php
But we have to figure out which package to download, and whether to use SVG only package, or package with PNGs (possible duplicate file name, script crashes?)

2.  Download ImageMagick:
http://www.imagemagick.org/script/formats.php

3. Run the following script:
(But we'd want to save the files to a new location, possibly on the school's file server so all LTSP servers could easily get to the clip art. That would also solve the potential duplicate file name problem).

4. Is there anyway to set the location OpenOffice Impress looks in first when you want to insert graphics?

While a school's IT person would have to do the above steps, it would then be in a user friendly manner for teachers to use it. I agree 100% that vector graphics are much more efficient (I bet the whole Open ClipArt package will be hundreds of MB if not GB when converted to bitmap, but if it's located on a school's server, it shouldn't be too bad) but until OpenOffice supports SVG, it would really be great for teachers to have easy access to a rich set of clip art to use both for their own documents, and for students to use for projects like the one Sharon described and mine.

Final question: ImageMagick's license claims to be compatible with GPL, but is not GPL, is that an issue?

Daniel