Man1 - rsvg-convert.1

You can use the –width and –height options to specify the size of the output image. Most of the time you should specify –keep-aspect-ratio to scale the image proportionally; for compatibility with old versions this is not the default.

rsvg-convert –width=*/100/ *–height=*/200/ *–keep-aspect-ratio input.svg > output.png

You can also specify dimensions as CSS lengths, for example 10px or 8.5in. The unit specifiers supported are as follows:

px	pixels (the unit specifier can be omitted)
in	inches
cm	centimeters
mm	millimeters
pt	points, 1/72 inch
pc	picas, 1/6 inch

The following will create a 600*900 pixel PNG, or 2*3 inches at 300 dots-per-inch:

rsvg-convert –width=*/2in/ *–height=*/3in/ *–keep-aspect-ratio –dpi-x=*/300/ *–dpi-y=*/300/ input.svg *> output.png

This will scale an SVG document to fit in an A4 page and convert it to PDF:

rsvg-convert –format=*/pdf/ *–width=*/210mm/ *–height=*/297mm/ *–keep-aspect-ratio input.svg > output.pdf

By default the size of the output comes from the rendered size, which can be specified with the –width and –height options, but you can specify a page size independently of the rendered size with –page-width and –page-height, together with –top and –left to control the position of the rendered image within the page.

This will create a PDF with a landscape A4 page, by scaling an SVG document to 10*10 cm, and placing it with its top-left corner 5 cm away from the top and 8 cm from the left of the page:

rsvg-convert –format=*/pdf/ *–page-width=*/297mm/ *–page-height=*/210mm/ *–width=*/10cm/ *–height=*/10cm/ *–keep-aspect-ratio –top=*/5cm/ *–left=*/8cm/ input.svg *> output.pdf

The –zoom option lets you scale the natural size of an SVG document. For example, if input.svg is a document with a declared size of 100*200 pixels, then the following command will render it at 250*500 pixels (zoom 2.5):

rsvg-convert –zoom=2.5 input.svg > output.png

You can limit the maximum scaled size by specifying the –width and –height options together with –zoom. Here, the image will be scaled 10x, but limited to 1000*1000 pixels at the most:

rsvg-convert –zoom=10 –width=1000 –height=1000 input.svg > output.png

If you need different scale factors for the horizontal and vertical dimensions, use the –x-zoom and –y-zoom options instead of –zoom.

The “pdf”, “ps”, and “eps” output formats support multiple pages. These can be created by combining multiple input SVG files. For example, this PDF file will have three pages:

rsvg-convert –format=*/pdf/ pg1.svg pg2.svg pg3.svg *> out.pdf

The size of each page will be computed, separately, as described in the DEFAULT OUTPUT SIZE section. This may result in a PDF being produced with differently-sized pages. If you need to produce a PDF with all pages set to exactly the same size, use the –page-width and –page-height options.

For example, the following command creates a three-page PDF out of three SVG documents. All the pages are portrait US Letter, and each SVG is scaled to fit so that there is a 1in margin around each page:

rsvg-convert –format=*/pdf/ *–page-width=*/8.5in/ *–page-height=*/11in/ *–width=*/6.5in/ *–height=*/9in/ *–keep-aspect-ratio –top=*/1in/ *–left=*/1in/ pg1.svg pg2.svg pg3.svg *> out.pdf

rsvg-convert uses the –dpi-x and –dpi-y options to configure the dots-per-inch (DPI) by which pixels will be converted to/from physical units like inches or centimeters. The default for both options is 96 DPI.

Consider this example SVG, which is nominally declared to be 2*3 inches in size:

  <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="2in" height="3in">
    <!-- graphical objects here -->
  </svg>

The following commands create PNGs of different sizes for the example SVG above:

rsvg-convert two-by-three.svg > output.png #### creates a 192*288 pixel PNG

rsvg-convert –dpi-x=*/300/ *–dpi-y=*/300/ two-by-three.svg *> output.png #### creates a 600*900 pixel PNG

Note that the final pixel dimensions are rounded up to the nearest pixel, to avoid clipping off the right/bottom edges. In the following example, rsvg-convert will generate a PNG 300x300 pixels in size:

rsvg-convert –width=*/299.5/ *–height=*/299.4/ input.svg *> output.png #### outputs 300x300 pixel PNG with a fractionally-scaled image

If you specify dimensions in physical units, they will be multiplied by the dots-per-inch (DPI) value to obtain dimensions in pixels. For example, this will generate a 96x96 pixel PNG, since it is 1x1 inch at the default 96 DPI:

rsvg-convert –width=*/1in/ *–height=*/1in/ input.svg *> output.png #### outputs 96x96 pixel PNG

Correspondingly, this will generate a 300x300 pixel PNG, since it is 1x1 inch at 300 DPI:

rsvg-convert –width=*/1in/ *–height=*/1in/ *–dpi-x=*/300/ *–dpi-y=*/300/ input.svg *> output.png #### outputs 300x300 pixel PNG

If you do not specify –width or –height options for the output size, rsvg-convert will figure out a “natural size” for the SVG as follows:

• SVG with width and height in pixel units (px): <svg width=“96px” height=“192px”> For PNG output, those same dimensions in pixels are used. For PDF/PS/EPS, that pixel size is converted to physical units based on the DPI value (see the –dpi-x and –dpi-y options),
• SVG with width and height in physical units: <svg width=“1in” height=“2in”> For PNG output, the width and height attributes get converted to pixels, based on the DPI value (see the –dpi-x and –dpi-y options). For PDF/PS/EPS output, the width/height in physical units define the size of the PDF unless you specify options for the page size; see SPECIFYING A PAGE SIZE above.
• SVG with viewBox only: <svg viewBox=“0 0 20 30”> The size of the viewBox attribute gets used for the pixel size of the image as in the first case above.
• SVG with width and height in percentages: <svg width=“100%” height=“100%” viewBox=“0 0 20 30”> Percentages are meaningless unless you specify a viewport size with the –width and –height options. In their absence, rsvg-convert will just use the size of the viewBox for the pixel size, as described above.
• SVG with no width, height, or viewBox: rsvg-convert will measure the extents of all graphical objects in the SVG document and render them at 1:1 scale (1 pixel for each CSS px unit). It is strongly recommended that you give SVG documents an explicit size with the width, height, or viewBox attributes.

You can use the –background-color option ( -b for short) to specify the backgroung color that will appear in parts of the image that would otherwise be transparent. This option accepts the same syntax as the CSS color property, so you can use #rrggbb syntax or CSS named colors like white.

rsvg-convert –background-color=*/white/ input.svg *> output.png #### opaque white

rsvg-convert -b ’#ff000080’ input.svg > output.png #### translucent red - use shell quotes so the # is not interpreted as a comment

An SVG document can use the <switch> element and children with the systemLanguage attribute to provide different content depending on the user’s language. For example:

  <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="200" height="100">
    <rect width="200" height="100" fill="white"/>
    <g transform="translate(30, 30)" font-size="20">
      <switch allowReorder="yes">
        <text systemLanguage="es">Español</text>
        <text systemLanguage="de">Deutsch</text>
        <text systemLanguage="fr">Français</text>
        <text>English fallback</text>
      </switch>
    </g>
  </svg>

You can use the –accept-language option to select which language to use when rendering. This option accepts strings formatted like an HTTP Accept-Language header, which is a comma-separated list of BCP47 language tags: https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/bcp47

rsvg-convert –accept-language=*/es-MX/ input.svg *> output.png #### selects Mexican Spanish; renders “Español”.

You can include an extra CSS stylesheet to be used when rendering an SVG document with the –stylesheet option. The stylesheet will have the CSS user origin, while styles declared in the SVG document will have the CSS author origin. This means your extra stylesheet’s styles will override or augment the ones in the document, unless the document has !important in its styles.

rsvg-convert –stylesheet=*/extra-styles.css/ input.svg *> output.png

For example, if this is input.svg:

   <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="100" height="100">
     <rect width="200" height="100" fill="white"/>

     <rect class="recolorable" x="10" y="10" width="50" height="50" fill="red"/>

     <text x="10" y="80" font-size="20" fill="currentColor">Hello</text>
   </svg>

And this is extra-styles.css:

   .recolorable { fill: blue; }

   * { color: green; }

Then the PNG created by the command above will have these elements:

• A blue square instead of a red one, because of the selector for the the recolorable class.
• Text in green, since a fill with currentColor gets substituted to the value of the color property, and the * selector applies to all elements.

-f –format [png, pdf, ps, eps, svg]

Output format for the rendered document. Default is png.

-o –output filename

Specify the output filename. If unspecified, outputs to standard output.

-v –version

Display what version of rsvg-convert you are running.

–help

Display a summary of usage and options.

–page-width length –page-height length

Page size of the output document; both options must be used together. The default is to use the image’s width and height as modified by the options below.

–top length

Distance between top edge of the page and the rendered image. Default is 0.

–left length

Distance between left edge of the page and the rendered image. Default is 0.

-w –width length

Width of the rendered image. If unspecified, the natural width of the image is used as the default. See the section “SPECIFYING DIMENSIONS” above for details.

-h –height integer

Height of the rendered image. If unspecified, the natural height of the image is used as the default. See the section “SPECIFYING DIMENSIONS” above for details.

-a –keep-aspect-ratio

Specify that the aspect ratio is to be preserved, i.e. the image is scaled proportionally to fit in the –width and –height. If not specified, aspect ratio will not be preserved.

-d –dpi-x number

Set the X resolution of the image in pixels per inch. Default is 96 DPI.

-p –dpi-y number

Set the Y resolution of the image in pixels per inch. Default is 96 DPI.

-x –x-zoom number

Horizontal scaling factor. Default is 1.0.

-y –y-zoom number

Vertical factor factor. Default is 1.0.

-z –zoom number

Horizontal and vertical scaling factor. Default is 1.0.

-b –background-color [black, white, #abccee, #aaa…]

Specify the background color. If unspecified, none is used as the default; this will create transparent PNGs, or PDF/PS/EPS without a special background.

-s –stylesheet filename.css

Filename of a custom CSS stylesheet.

-l –accept-language [es-MX,fr,en]

Specify which languages will be used for SVG documents with multiple languages. The string is formatted like an HTTP Accept-Language header, which is a comma-separated list of BCP47 language tags: https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/bcp47. The default is to use the language specified by environment variables; see the section “ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES” below.

–keep-image-data

Include the original, compressed images in the final output, rather than uncompressed RGB data. This is the default behavior for PDF and (E)PS output.

–no-keep-image-data

Do not include the original, compressed images but instead embed uncompressed RGB date in PDF or (E)PS output. This will most likely result in larger documents that are slower to read.

-i –export-id object-id

Allows to specify an SVG object that should be exported based on its XML id. If not specified, all objects will be exported.

-u –unlimited

The XML parser has some guards designed to mitigate large CPU or memory consumption in the face of malicious documents. It may also refuse to resolve data: URIs used to embed image data. If you are running into such issues when converting a SVG, this option allows to turn off these guards.

–testing

For developers only: render images for librsvg’s test suite.