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About dvisvgm


dvisvgm is a program which converts dvi, pdf, and other image formats to the vector graphic format svg. This program is part of TeX Live, but requires access to the Ghostscript library libgs. In turn, libgs requires X11.

X11 is an open source windowing system used by Linux systems. Most Macintosh users can ignore it, but it is required to use dvisvgm. An open source version of X11 called XQuartz is available for the Macintosh. It can be found here. Installation is straightforward and easy.

There are two versions of Ghostscript in MacTeX, one compiled with X11 support and one without this support. If you installed MacTeX or Ghostscript before installing X11, install the Ghostscript portion again to get the version with X11 support. If you no longer have the MacTeX install package, you can download just our Ghostscript install package Ghostscript.pkg.

dvisvgm also requires the Ghostscript library libgs and the program mutool. These extra pieces are only used by dvisvgm, so they are not installed by default. They are available in a custom install portion of MacTeX. If you no longer have the MacTeX install package, you can download GhostscriptExtras.pkg. This package installs both libgs and mutool.

TeX Live contains internal versions of all libraries it uses, so installation of MacTeX does not add any file to /usr/local/lib. But GhostscriptExtras adds three symbolic links to /usr/local/lib which point to libgs. The actual library is in a subfolder of /usr/local/share. The program dvisvgm should automatically find and use the symbolic link libgs.10.dylib. Thus after installation of X11, Ghostscript, and GhostscriptExtras, it should work without further ado.

(The dependence on X11 will be eliminated in MacTeX-2025. As of January 24, 2025, updated install packages for Ghostscript-10.04.0 and Ghostscript-10.04.0-Extras are available at https://pages.uoregon.edu/koch. These packages work with or without X11.)



Happy TeXing on macOS !

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