Importing graphics, is this really supported?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg25419] Importing graphics, is this really supported?
- From: Jeff DuMonthier <jeff at lheapop.gsfc.nasa.gov>
- Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 01:07:24 -0400 (EDT)
- Organization: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (skates.gsfc.nasa.gov)
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
I have been trying to import diagrams into Mathematica so I can use Mathematica notebooks as engineering notebooks. The diagrams are output from an electrical schematic capture tool as level 3 postscript or encapsulated postscript. Encapsulated postscript is one of the formats the Import function is supposed to accept, but I have not been able to read these files. I can read other encapsulated postscript files (as long as they are small) so it is not a problem with the syntax of the function call. Sometimes I get an error message stating there is not enough memory to import the file even though I give large allocations to Mathematica, Mathkernal and the translation utilities and these files are only 100k-200k (line graphics). Most of the time there is no error message to give me any clue what is wrong, it just doesn't work. This is on a Mac and there are a variety of shareware utilities which I can use to read these files and convert them to TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PICT etc. Reading the converted files usually fails with a memory related error. I would try this on a Unix version but I only have version 3 for Solaris and the Import function is new in Version 4. I have been able to import the diagrams by copying the pict images directly from the shareware postscript converters and pasting them into Mathematica. However, pict is only supported on the Mac and I want to be able to read the notebooks on any platform. When I try to convert the pict's to Mathematica's postscript format using the 'Convert To -> Postscript' menu selection it processes for quite a while and runs out of memory even with a 60MByte allocation. I don't understand why a $20 shareware utility can do easily what a >$2000 package like Mathematica finds an intractable problem.