Hi, I've been investigating what it would take to get therion to produce SVG maps. I'm not too interested in replacing pdftex to produce atlases: output in pdf seems fine for that, but I find it hard to successfully convert pdfs with transparency into something I can edit and add into larger posters/publications. I note that tunnelX have recently acquired an SVG output module, but then they have it easy rendering through the Java2D API as they can just plug in Batik. Looking at the 0.3.5 sources I'd originally though that the output of metapost was used by pdftex, but I see that you parse the PS and write your own pdf fragments. Since SVG uses exactly same rendering model as pdf it should be easy enough to adapt this to produce SVG fragments also. With these, replacing pdftex for the job of stitching the fragments together into a map should be feasible. Do the developers have any comments on this? If it seems sensible to you then I'll have a go at an svg version of thconvert.cxx when I get some free time. Also, do you have a CVS/svn repository for the code? If so, would it be possible for that to be exposed read-only? I hate developing against point releases when I know that a project is still undergoing such active development. Cheers, John
Looking at the 0.3.5 sources I'd originally though that the output of metapost was used by pdftex, but I see that you parse the PS and write your own pdf fragments. Since SVG uses exactly same rendering model as pdf it should be easy enough to adapt this to produce SVG fragments also. With these, replacing pdftex for the job of stitching the fragments together into a map should be feasible.
Yes, SVG is planned to be implemented in about a month. The PostScript parsing needs to be enhanced a bit (some simplifications were takan because of similarity of PS and PDF). The idea is to get only map in SVG (and other formats), leaving the Atlas for PDF.
Also, do you have a CVS/svn repository for the code? If so, would it be possible for that to be exposed read-only? I hate developing against point releases when I know that a project is still undergoing such active development.
We don't use online CVS repository -- I would have no possibility to access it. We used to put the development tarball on the web page every week or so, but that led only to confusion. M.
At 00:31 +0000 24.1.2005, John Pybus wrote: *******************************************
Hi,
I've been investigating what it would take to get therion to produce SVG maps.
I just tested the possibility to read PDF from therion to Illustrator CS and exoport several other formats: CJ.pdf -> Illustrator Illustrator -> CJ.dxf CJ.eps CJ.html (for swf) CJ.svg CJ.swf Without any problem. It is about 16.5 MB, so may I give the samples to wiki? Martin --
I just tested the possibility to read PDF from therion to Illustrator CS and exoport several other formats:
CJ.pdf -> Illustrator
I have been doing this to purplish surveys, with the plan and elevation aligned. The text has been coming through as dots, but as I am new to illustrator, I was not going to say anything until I had investigated further. However now seems appropriate. While on the subject the grouping seems to be a little random, again not had time to investigate further, but if by some how the groups could be associated by scraps, that may make sense. Eg I rotated a plan to align with an elevation and therefore had to rotate the text and cross sections. The text was grouped together, nice and easy (if it had not been dots) but the cross sections where all over the place. As I said, I have now been using illustrator for a week so may be missing something. Andrew
Martin Budaj wrote:
Looking at the 0.3.5 sources I'd originally though that the output of metapost was used by pdftex, but I see that you parse the PS and write your own pdf fragments. Since SVG uses exactly same rendering model as pdf it should be easy enough to adapt this to produce SVG fragments also. With these, replacing pdftex for the job of stitching the fragments together into a map should be feasible.
Yes, SVG is planned to be implemented in about a month. The PostScript parsing needs to be enhanced a bit (some simplifications were takan because of similarity of PS and PDF). The idea is to get only map in SVG (and other formats), leaving the Atlas for PDF.
Sounds good news. Does this mean that it's not worth me trying to do any work on this myself, or that you'd appreciate any start I make before you get round to it?
We don't use online CVS repository -- I would have no possibility to access it. We used to put the development tarball on the web page every week or so, but that led only to confusion.
Fair enough. Perhaps if it's not on the downloads page but a separate developers page it wouldn't be a cause of confusion. John
Martin Sluka wrote:
At 00:31 +0000 24.1.2005, John Pybus wrote: *******************************************
Hi,
I've been investigating what it would take to get therion to produce SVG maps.
I just tested the possibility to read PDF from therion to Illustrator CS and exoport several other formats:
CJ.pdf -> Illustrator
That's all well and good, but I don't have a copy of Illustrator, nor easy access to a computer with an OS which Illustrator is available for. John
+++ John Pybus [05-01-25 01:20 +0000]:
That's all well and good, but I don't have a copy of Illustrator, nor easy access to a computer with an OS which Illustrator is available for.
Use inkscape. A very fine SVG drawing package. It's quite new so some things are a bit 'not finished' but it's very reliable and good enough for most things and getting very good reviews all over (about time there was a decent vector package for GNU/Linux). Wookey -- Aleph One Ltd, Bottisham, CAMBRIDGE, CB5 9BA, UK Tel +44 (0) 1223 811679 work: http://www.aleph1.co.uk/ play: http://www.chaos.org.uk/~wookey/
On Tue, Jan 25, 2005 at 02:57:42AM +0000, Wookey wrote:
+++ John Pybus [05-01-25 01:20 +0000]:
That's all well and good, but I don't have a copy of Illustrator, nor easy access to a computer with an OS which Illustrator is available for.
Use inkscape. A very fine SVG drawing package. It's quite new so some things are a bit 'not finished' but it's very reliable and good enough for most things and getting very good reviews all over (about time there was a decent vector package for GNU/Linux).
Looking at their site, it doesn't (yet) have PDF import, so it's not a good alternative to Illustrator in this situation. Cheers, Olly
John Pybus wrote:
Yes, SVG is planned to be implemented in about a month. The PostScript parsing needs to be enhanced a bit (some simplifications were takan because of similarity of PS and PDF). The idea is to get only map in SVG (and other formats), leaving the Atlas for PDF.
Sounds good news. Does this mean that it's not worth me trying to do any work on this myself, or that you'd appreciate any start I make before you get round to it?
I think it would be better not to try to extend current conversion to handle SVG. It's major drawback is line-by-line PS to PDF conversion, which saves memory, but is not usable for SVG or other formats. The conversion itself needs to be rewritten from scratch. Other topic is text handlig -- labels in SVG will probably not be processed by MetaPost, but directly by Therion, which adds more complexity to conversion. Martin
At 01:20 +0000 25.1.2005, John Pybus wrote: *******************************************
That's all well and good, but I don't have a copy of Illustrator, nor easy access to a computer with an OS which Illustrator is available for.
May you send me your PDFs? I'll send you back SVGs. Martin --
participants (8)
-
Andrew Atkinson -
John Pybus -
Ladislav Blazek -
Martin Budaj -
Martin Sluka -
Olly Betts -
Stacho Mudrak -
Wookey