-hh wrote: > R.G. wrote: >> He [Alejandro] does a very good job of it, but SVG includes >> primitives beyond what LC offers. We have ovals, lines, >> polygons, roundRects, and rects, but SVG also allows paths >> that can consist of straight lines, curves, and even Beiziers. > > LC is pretty good able to do straight lines, curves, and even > quadratic or cubic Bezier curves ... > > And Alejandro translates SVG also to these (did already LC's Ian > in his basic SVGL of 2009). And moreover, very difficult, Al > currently imports to Graphic Effects.
The difference between a true Bezier object and emulating Beziers with polygons is resolution. Polygons can be made to like very good on screen, but cannot be made to resize larger, or print to a printer with higher resolution than the monitor, with the same smoothness as a true Bezier curve object.
When thinking of SVG path emulation in a language that has no native support for such things (yet), consider a circle: an infinite number of points a given distance from a given point. Of course an infinite number of points would take infinite processing power to calculate, but a graphics engine like LiveCode's or Skia's (which in recent versions is the same thing) will render a circle primitive by calculating only the points it needs for the display device it's being rendered on.
Given that, if a fixed number of points is used to define a circle at a given resolution, enlarging the object will expose its points, making it evident that it's an approximation made from a polygon. The larger the resizing, the more jaggy its appearance. Shrunk down small enough a stop sign will look like a circle, but enlarged it becomes increasingly clear that it's a polygon.
Same with Beziers and mixed-type paths, since neither are among LC's built-in primitives at this time.
Skia, however, has SVG libraries available, which can be used to render any primitives defined in SVG to the full resolution of the display device (or printer, as the case may be).
-- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Systems Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web ____________________________________________________________________ ambassa...@fourthworld.com http://www.FourthWorld.com _______________________________________________ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
