# Exporting Cairo Makie to tikz

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/exporting-cairo-makie-to-tikz/62895>\
**Category:** Visualization\
**Tags:** plotting, latex, makie\
**Created:** [June 14, 2021, 3:52pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/exporting-cairo-makie-to-tikz/62895 "2021-06-14T15:52:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![EvoArt](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/evoart/32/25357_2.png) [@EvoArt](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/EvoArt)\
**Post date:** [June 14, 2021, 3:52pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/exporting-cairo-makie-to-tikz/62895/1 "2021-06-14T15:52:28Z")

</div>

I am trying to pycall svg2tikz so that I can build functions to plot CairoMakie to tikz, for seamless integration with LaTeX docs. I’ve edited the post title, as it’s specifically about CairoMakie output now.

The following code

```julia
using PyCall, CairoMakie

svg2tikz = pyimport("svg2tikz")
f = Figure()
ax = Axis(f[1,1])
scatter!(ax,rand(5),rand(5))
save("test.svg", f)
svg2tikz.convert_svg("test.svg")

```

produces

```julia
ERROR: PyError ($(Expr(:escape, :(ccall(#= C:\Users\arn203\.julia\packages\PyCall\BD546\src\pyfncall.jl:43 =# @pysym(:PyObject_Call), PyPtr, (PyPtr, PyPtr, PyPtr), o, pyargsptr, kw))))) <class 'ValueError'>
ValueError('Unicode strings with encoding declaration are not supported. Please use bytes input or XML fragments without declaration.')
  File "C:\Users\arn203\.julia\conda\3\lib\site-packages\svg2tikz\extensions\tikz_export.py", line 1453, in convert_svg       
    tikz_code = effect.convert(source.read(), **kwargs)
  File "C:\Users\arn203\.julia\conda\3\lib\site-packages\svg2tikz\extensions\tikz_export.py", line 1426, in convert
    self.parse(svg_file)
  File "C:\Users\arn203\.julia\conda\3\lib\site-packages\svg2tikz\extensions\tikz_export.py", line 721, in parse
    self.document = inkex.etree.parse(stream)
  File "src\lxml\etree.pyx", line 3521, in lxml.etree.parse
  File "src\lxml\parser.pxi", line 1876, in lxml.etree._parseDocument
  File "src\lxml\parser.pxi", line 1891, in lxml.etree._parseMemoryDocument

Stacktrace:
  [1] pyerr_check
    @ C:\Users\arn203\.julia\packages\PyCall\BD546\src\exception.jl:62 [inlined]
  [2] pyerr_check
    @ C:\Users\arn203\.julia\packages\PyCall\BD546\src\exception.jl:66 [inlined]
  [3] _handle_error(msg::String)
    @ PyCall C:\Users\arn203\.julia\packages\PyCall\BD546\src\exception.jl:83
  [4] macro expansion
    @ C:\Users\arn203\.julia\packages\PyCall\BD546\src\exception.jl:97 [inlined]
  [5] #107
    @ C:\Users\arn203\.julia\packages\PyCall\BD546\src\pyfncall.jl:43 [inlined]
  [6] disable_sigint
    @ .\c.jl:458 [inlined]
  [7] __pycall!
    @ C:\Users\arn203\.julia\packages\PyCall\BD546\src\pyfncall.jl:42 [inlined]
  [8] _pycall!(ret::PyObject, o::PyObject, args::Tuple{String}, nargs::Int64, kw::Ptr{Nothing})
    @ PyCall C:\Users\arn203\.julia\packages\PyCall\BD546\src\pyfncall.jl:29
  [9] _pycall!
    @ C:\Users\arn203\.julia\packages\PyCall\BD546\src\pyfncall.jl:11 [inlined]
 [10] #_#114
    @ C:\Users\arn203\.julia\packages\PyCall\BD546\src\pyfncall.jl:86 [inlined]
 [11] (::PyObject)(args::String)
    @ PyCall C:\Users\arn203\.julia\packages\PyCall\BD546\src\pyfncall.jl:86
 [12] top-level scope
    @ REPL[10]:1

```

Just wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of what is going wrong here, so I can figure out a way to make it work, or abandon the idea as way-over-my-head.

Thanks in advance.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![EvoArt](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/evoart/32/25357_2.png) [@EvoArt](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/EvoArt)\
**Post date:** [June 14, 2021, 5:52pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/exporting-cairo-makie-to-tikz/62895/2 "2021-06-14T17:52:51Z")

</div>

I’ve half cracked it. Just opened the svg file in notepad and deleted the encoding. Now to see if it actually produced the right picture…

Yep. It works. Could be a game changer for me.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![EvoArt](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/evoart/32/25357_2.png) [@EvoArt](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/EvoArt)\
**Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 11:22am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/exporting-cairo-makie-to-tikz/62895/3 "2021-06-15T11:22:17Z")

</div>

Only works for 2d plots as far as I can tell. And no text gets converted (e.g. axis ticks) unsurprisingly.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![EvoArt](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/evoart/32/25357_2.png) [@EvoArt](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/EvoArt)\
**Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 11:32am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/exporting-cairo-makie-to-tikz/62895/4 "2021-06-15T11:32:27Z")

</div>

The generated tex file has a bunch of these essentially empty scopes

```julia
\begin{scope}[fill=black]
    \begin{scope}[shift={(19.08984,221.28125)}]
    \end{scope}
  \end{scope}

```

However, each one corresponds to the location of a single digit of an axis tick label. So working out which tick goes where and doing

```julia
\begin{scope}[fill=black]
    \begin{scope}[shift={(19.08984,221.28125)}]
    \node at (0,0) {5}; #e.g.
    \end{scope}
  \end{scope}

```

for each one will recover the axis tick labels, but now in LaTeX.  
Would be great to automate this with a function that reads the locations of empty scopes and puts in the correct character. Or reads the original SVG file and decodes the characters.