How can I produce a .svg file from a TikZ diagram?

Question

I would like to produce separate .svg files for each of the TikZ diagrams in my LaTeX document. Each of the .svg files will then be used in a WordPress web page. I have tried a number of things, none of which have produced good results:

• Convert .pdf files to .png using GIMP (after transporting the .pdf files to my linux system); the resulting image quality is poor, very blurry, but otherwise intact, and all fonts were rendered properly

• Convert .pdf files to .svg using Inkscape; this is a disaster, as the resulting .svg file has the graph labels mashed together, and some of the labels are pushed on top of axes or graph traces

• Convert .dvi files to .svg using dvisvgm; this is also a disaster, as the resulting .svg file contains an unrecognizable mess

• Convert .pdf files to .svg using pdf2svg; this was better, as the graphics were very sharp, but the fonts did not convert well (mathematical symbols were not in italics, square-root symbols were mangled)

Is there a way to get .svg files directly from LaTeX/TikZ without having to first produce .pdf files? I am guessing that this will work better than having to produce .pdf files first and then have to convert them.

I compile my LaTeX document using MikTeX via WinEdt (pdflatex) on a Windows XP system.

Update: In response to Speravir, here is one of the examples I've been working with:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}

\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}[domain=-2:2,samples=100,scale=1.0,>=latex]
\tikzset{bgrid/.style={help lines,color=blue!10,very thin}}

\draw[bgrid] (-1.5,-3.5) grid (7.5,3.5);

\draw[<->, color=black] (-1.5,0) -- (7.5,0) node[right] {$x$};
\draw[<->, color=black] (0,-3.5) -- (0,3.5) node[above] {$y$};

\foreach \x/\xtext in {-1,1,2,3,4,5,6,7}
\draw (\x cm,1pt) -- (\x cm,-1pt) node[anchor=north] {$\xtext$};

\foreach \y/\ytext in {-3,-2,-1,1,2,3}
\draw (1pt,\y cm) -- (-1pt,\y cm) node[anchor=east] {$\ytext$};

\draw[thick,color=black,domain=0:7.5] plot (\x,{sqrt(\x)}) node[anchor=south] {$y = \sqrt{x}$};
\draw[dashed,color=black,domain=0:7.5] plot (\x,{(-1)*(sqrt(\x))}) node[anchor=north] {$y = -\sqrt{x}$};
\draw[thick,color=black,domain=-1.5:5.5] plot (\x,{(\x)-2}) node[anchor=south] {$y = x - 2$};

\filldraw[black] (4,2) circle(2pt) node[anchor=south east] {$(4, 2)$};
\filldraw[red] (1,-1) circle(2pt);
\draw[red] (1.5,-1) node[anchor=west] {$(1, -1)$};

\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

Answer 1

If I run dvisvgm with option -n and the evaluation of PostScript specials is enabled, I get the expected result:

Since MiKTeX doesn't provide a dvisvgm binary through its repositories, you have to install it manually. Recent builds for MiKTeX are available from the dvisvgm website. Simply extract dvisvgm.exe to the MiKTeX subfolder miktex\bin, or even better, install it in a local texmf tree.

Answer 2

On linux, you can use pdf2svg (an opensource tool). All glyphs are converted to paths, thus you can't edit your text. But it is the only tool that seems to give good results for images mixing drawings and texts.

In your MWE, to get smooth result, I add the smooth option to plot.

Here is a snapshot of the svg file rendered by Firefox (click on the image to download the SVG file):

Here the two commands used to convert TEX to SVG:

pdflatex file.tex
pdf2svg file.pdf file.svg

Your MWE with my changes:

\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}[domain=-2:2,samples=100,scale=1.0,>=latex]
\tikzset{bgrid/.style={help lines,color=blue!10,very thin}}

\draw[bgrid] (-1.5,-3.5) grid (7.5,3.5);

\draw[<->, color=black] (-1.5,0) -- (7.5,0) node[right] {$x$};
\draw[<->, color=black] (0,-3.5) -- (0,3.5) node[above] {$y$};

\foreach \x/\xtext in {-1,1,2,3,4,5,6,7}
\draw (\x cm,1pt) -- (\x cm,-1pt) node[anchor=north] {$\xtext$};

\foreach \y/\ytext in {-3,-2,-1,1,2,3}
\draw (1pt,\y cm) -- (-1pt,\y cm) node[anchor=east] {$\ytext$};

\draw[thick,color=black,domain=0:7.5,smooth]
plot (\x,{sqrt(\x)}) node[anchor=south] {$y = \sqrt{x}$};
\draw[dashed,color=black,domain=0:7.5,smooth]
plot (\x,{(-1)*(sqrt(\x))}) node[anchor=north] {$y = -\sqrt{x}$};
\draw[thick,color=black,domain=-1.5:5.5,samples=3]
plot (\x,{(\x)-2}) node[anchor=south] {$y = x - 2$};

\filldraw[black] (4,2) circle(2pt) node[anchor=south east] {$(4, 2)$};
\filldraw[red] (1,-1) circle(2pt);
\draw[red] (1.5,-1) node[anchor=west] {$(1, -1)$};

\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}