\includegraphics, try another extension

Question

I have a number of documents (jupyter notebooks) that are created and accessed essentially using a browser interface, and because of the browser interface the cleanest way to include external vector pictures in a document is using the SVG format.

Those documents can be converted to LaTeX documents, and while it's easy to add further material to the produced file, in terms of loading packages, redefining commands etc it is not so easy to modify the rest of the produced text, that in particular comprises lines like

\includegraphics{my_picture.svg}

that pdflatex does not appreciate at all.

My question, is it possible to redefine \includegraphics so that pdflatex tries to load my_picture.pdf when it is instructed to load my_picture.svg?

I know that I can have an automatic conversion from .svg to pdf but due to other reasons I already have the .pdf files (that are, in effect, produced using LateX and later converted to .svg)

P.S. It is possible to post-process the LaTeX file, as produced by the conversion procedure, before running pdflatex (or should I say pre-process?) but I'd like to avoid this intermediate step.

@Bernard, by "it is not so easy to modify the rest of the produced text" I tried to express that I cannot easily remove the extension — otoh it's very easy to add stuff in the prologue, so I try to follow this course of action. — gboffi, Jun 24 '16 at 11:33
Would regular expressions search and replace be an acceptable solution? — Bernard, Jun 24 '16 at 11:38

score 7 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 24 '16 at 13:25

7

You can add a graphics rule (I didn't test if it works for all sort of pathes and curious file names):

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{book}


\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{etoolbox}
\makeatletter
\preto\Gin@extensions{svg,}
\DeclareGraphicsRule{.svg}{pdf}{.pdf}{\noexpand\Gin@base.pdf}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

\includegraphics{example-image-A.svg}

\end{document}

answered Jun 24 '16 at 13:25

Ulrike Fischer

327,261

Thank you Ulrike, not only your solution works but works at the right level, defining a new file extension and declaring the intended behaviour right inside of the graphics machinery... Accepted & upvoted. – gboffi Jun 24 '16 at 14:48
Does this only work with pdflatex? With xelatex it raises an error: Unable to load picture or PDF file 'example-image-A.svg'. – Clément Nov 06 '20 at 05:03
@Clément no it doesn't work with xelatex. – Ulrike Fischer Nov 06 '20 at 10:21

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 24 '16 at 12:04

3

It is always possible to redefine a command, the question is : will it break something if I do it? If you are certain that \includegraphics is used only to import svg files, than this should work:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}

\let\oig\includegraphics
\def\topdf#1.svg{#1.pdf}
\renewcommand{\includegraphics}[2][]{\oig[#1]{\topdf#2}}

\begin{document}
\includegraphics[width=.25\linewidth]{test.svg}
\end{document}

Macro \topdf strips off the svgextension and replaces it with pdf: \topdf lalala.svg -> lalala.pdf (no braces around the argument).

answered Jun 24 '16 at 12:04

Christoph Frings

1,527

Thank you Christoph, your solution works but it is rather ad hoc and limiting w/r to other uses of graphics. I've upvoted it (it works) but there is a better answer. – gboffi Jun 24 '16 at 14:32
Yeah, I learned something too with Ulrike's answer :) – Christoph Frings Jun 24 '16 at 15:17

\includegraphics, try another extension

2 Answers2

Linked