On 2009-05-13 14:35+0100 Alban Rochel wrote: > Hello all, > > Working on the QSAS version of the Qt PLplot driver, I've added the > possibility to convert fonts to vector paths for SVG export. This solves > the font rendering issues in SVG (wrong sizes, wrong offsets, depending > on the editor used), BUT makes the text non-editable (and the files > slightly bigger). > > I may add this feature to a future update of the Qt drivers. Is the > PLplot community interested in that? As an option? As the default option?
Yes please (!) as the default option for svgqt (and as the non-default option for all other qt devices if possible). As you say it works around the current text positioning bugs for many of the SVG viewers/editors. But another benefit is it works around a fundamental font-handling bug I have reported to Qt for their SVG backend. The SVG standard allows font hints (I think they call it generic font families), but instead of using that for our case where the font family is a null string, and our Qt font hints are supposed to be followed because of that, Qt simply ignores our hints in this case and outputs SVG files with a null string font family. Thus, currently, SVG viewers/editors dealing with out svgqt files have to use their fallback fonts (usually sans) regardless of what generic font hint (sans, sans-serif, monotype, etc.) PLplot has specified which makes the results legible but far from satisfactory. Note that libcairo handles all their fonts as embedded (i.e., rendered as vector paths within the file) so that is what we get for all the cairo devices. So if it is possible, you may want to supply an embedded font option for all Qt devices. But it should probably be non-default for everything but svgqt since it might be a useful option to have in certain cases (sending a plot to someone who does not have your rich family of fonts), but the case for this feature for other Qt devices is not as compelling as for the svgqt case. In sum, using embedded vector path fonts would be most welcome as the default option for svgqt. At the point when the positioning bugs in svg viewers/editors and the bug in handling font hints for the SVG backend of Qt are solved we can always change the default back to how fonts are currently handled in svgqt since it does make the files smaller and allows you to edit the text in them. Using embedded vector path fonts for all other Qt devices would also be a useful non-default option. Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The NEW KODAK i700 Series Scanners deliver under ANY circumstances! Your production scanning environment may not be a perfect world - but thanks to Kodak, there's a perfect scanner to get the job done! With the NEW KODAK i700 Series Scanner you'll get full speed at 300 dpi even with all image processing features enabled. http://p.sf.net/sfu/kodak-com _______________________________________________ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
