Converting EMF to SVG

This is one of those “in case I ever need to do it again” posts. Converting EMF files to SVG files – sounds like it should be a simple task, translating from one vector format to another. It turned out not to be.

However, in the end:

find . -name '*.emf' -exec unoconv -f svg "{}" \;

successfully converted a nested directory structure full of .emf files to have their .svg equivalents alongside. Oh, and for some reason (I don’t care why) you have to run this first:

unoconv --listener &

The key ingredient was unoconv (thankfully, Debian-packaged as unoconv), which also requires a load of openoffice and/or libreoffice stuff to make it work. There were a load of other possible ways of doing this that didn’t work, which I won’t even go into. Also, don’t even ask why I needed to do this in the first place.

Update: After I’d finished, I realised I also needed EPS. Easy conversion, not so easy command due to various shell-related complications:

find . -name '*.svg' -exec sh -c 'inkscape "{}" --export-eps="`dirname "{}"`/`basename "{}" .svg`.eps"' \;