include svg images with the svg package

Question

I'm trying to use the svg package for inserting svg images in my latex file, as suggested in other questions. But now I ran into a problem:

For example I have a image figure1.svg, if I write

\includesvg{figure1}

it will give an error says

ERROR: LaTeX Error: File `figure1.pdf_tex' not found.

But if I write

\includesvg{figure1.svg}

it will give another error says

ERROR: LaTeX Error: Unknown graphics extension: .svg.

How can I fix this problem? I'll prefer not having to convert all my svg files to pdf_tex files with some external program.

---

Update

My LaTeX environment is latest the TeXLive 2013 on Windows 7. A MWE code would be

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{svg}

\begin{document}

\begin{figure}[htbp]
  \centering
  \includesvg{figure1.svg}
  \caption{svg image}
\end{figure}

\end{document}

Answer 1

The problem is that you have given a file extension: you should not do this (indeed this seems clear in the svg manual. For me, the short demo

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{svg}
\usepackage{amsmath} % you need amsmath as the demo includes a use of \eqref
\begin{document}

\begin{figure}[htbp]
  \centering
  \includesvg{image}
  \caption{svg image}
\end{figure}

\end{document}

using the demonstration file used by the package works fine.

Note that for this to work:

• You need Inkscape on your path (why?) (schtandard pointed to this step-by-step of the setup)
• You need to compile your .tex file to PDF with the --shell-escape option enabled

Answer 2

I had the same problem.

I found a simple way to deal with it.

• Just open the svg file by Inkscape.

• Save as the .pdf format

• On the next pop up window:

  • Embed Fonts

  • Use exported object's size

  • Margin 0.1

• click ok

Next the generated pdf file will be imported by latex easily as same as png or eps.

---

But some times inkscape does not read the svg file properly and some mistakes are occurred. In this case the solution which works for me is:

• generate a pdf version of figure by your used designer software

• include the pdf file in latex

• use trim for cropping the figure in latex

for example:

\includegraphics[width=0.8\textwidth, trim={1cm 3cm 1cm 8cm},clip]{Fig.pdf}

Answer 3

While this may not be a valuable option for some users, it may be worth it for some:

Online SVG to PDF converters.

Here you may find Google search results.

After this one may follow the usual strategies for embedding PDF files into LaTeX,
(as described for example in the answer above).

Hope this helps some users. ;)

Answer 4

I had the same issue and just wanted to share the trivial solution which worked for me. I am using overleaf by the way.

I had to remove one layer from my folder structure.

---

This did not work:

+-- data
|   +-- img
|       +-- file.svg
+--TeX
|  +-- Sections
|  |   +-- 01_Section.tex
|  +-- main.tex
|  +-- ...

Removing "TeX" layer solved the porblem:

+-- data
|   +-- img
|       +-- file.svg
+-- Sections
|   +-- 01_Section.tex
+-- main.tex
+-- ...