How to install SVG conversion support

Owned by Former user (Deleted)
Last updated: Jul 25, 2019
2 min read

Description

With release 4.0 of Visio for Confluence, Confluence administrators have the ability to enable SVG image conversion support so that the visio macro can render images on browsers not capable of rendering the Internet Explorer (IE) Visio viewer control. This support requires the installation of a SVG conversion program on the Confluence server. The conversion program is not perfect, but can provide a reasonable image in many cases. The rendering is likely to improve over time as the program is developed further. The conversion program installation on the Confluence server should be updated as updates of the program become available.

Confluence Administrators Only

The installation must be done on the Confluence server.

Limitations

  1. The conversion library may not convert some Visio diagrams or convert them with significant corruption of the image shown.
  2. The conversion routine adds additional processing when rendering visio diagrams when best or svg options are used. The processing has been observed to be sub-second on example Visio diagrams and modern CPU, your mileage may vary (smile). The Cache Macro together with the attachment support can be used to improve performance and reduce server load if necessary.
  3. Modern browser versions are required to support inline svg - see http://caniuse.com/svg-html5

Support

Users will need to open issues with the 3rd party library directly and upgrade their installation as appropriate to improve the rendering. Related request/issues on the add-on will not be supported unless there are changes to the library requiring parameter changes to the add-on calls.

Steps for installation

The program is OS specific. The primary difference being Windows. The base library is libvisio provided by the LibreOffice group (GPL licensed). A command line version is required for Visio for Confluence and is available as a free (GPL licensed) program - see vsd2svg.

Download and install following the OS specific instructions

Windows

http://sourceforge.net/projects/vsd2svg/files/vsd2svg/ - vsd2svg.exe and dlls (includes libvisio)

  • Find and open the latest version folder - for example 0.0.3
  • Find and download the zip file
  • Unzip to get the exe and dlls necessary to run
  • Put these in a directory
non-Windows

These libraries may also have dependencies that need to be installed as well. This depends on what is already available on your installation.

libvisio - https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/DLP/Libraries/libvisio

vsd2svg - http://sourceforge.net/projects/vsd2svg/

Steps after installation

  1. Conversion support must be on path used to start the Confluence server
    • First, check to see if the installer set your path already: Open a new command prompt, type vsd2svg, and make sure it is found
    • If not found, either add the path to the conversion executable to your server PATH environment variable or modify your Confluence startup script (for example: bin/start-confluence.bat or bin/start-confluence.sh) to append the path to the conversion executable to the PATH environment variable.
  2. Restart the Confluence server (consider the optional step instructions before doing the restart)
  3. Go to UPM and find the Visio for Confluence and press the Configure button
  4. Change the default output to best (recommended) so that all existing visio macro usage will take advantage of the support

Optional Step

While not required, this step will make it easier for your users to use SVG images on your site.

  1. How to display SVG attachments in Confluence