Open source software capable of open Sketch files

I have received several .sketch files from a graphic designer. I assume these files were created by SketchApp, which is a propietary software.

Since I don’t need to edit the files, but merely review them, I would rather not buy the editor.

Is there an open-source software capable of viewing .sketch files, or convert them to PDFs?

Addendum
Exporting a PDF is a valid solution, but I would like to take a look at the .sketch files at our shared folder during the workday without asking for a PDF export every few hours (the designer works from home, so I can’t just drop by to his desk).

Answer

While not open source, SketchTool is free and from the same company.

It’s advertised as

An OS X command-line app for exporting Pages and Slices out of .sketch documents.

I don’t know if that means that you can export to .pdf, but I’d assume that you can at least export to something that’s not .sketch. Otherwise this command line tool would be almost useless.

Given that they also make the app, compatibility is ensured.

I see 2 possible workflows:

  1. You install SketchTool on your machine and run it on all the shared files before opening them. This has the least impact on the designer and you are in full control of when the conversion happens.
  2. There’s a problem with 1., which can be found on the website linked above:

    SketchTool can only export a document if all the fonts that it uses have been installed on the system.

    If your designer does use some fancy font that you don’t have, you could run into issues. Maybe it replaces missing fonts with standard ones, but this obviously changes the result, which could impact your review work, depending on how important special font are.

    To circumvent this, you could install SketchTool on the designer’s computer and let him do the exporting. It’s probably a good idea to set up some script that runs in the background and automatically executes SketchTool, when new .sketch files are saved (or existing ones updated). This allows the designer to keep his existing workflow and prevent him from forgetting to run this command line thing that does stuff with the files which could potentially be very alien to him/her.

Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : Adam Matan , Answer Author : rapidograph

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