[Qgis-developer] Re: SVG handling in qgis

[Andreas Neumann]

Hi John,

Can you be more specific on what "garbled" means? Does it mean that text 
elements are broken? Or other elements as well? Can you provide an example?

Yes, there are a few problems with proper SVG support in QGIS. Here is a 
summary:

* Import in print composer or symbols:
   - qt only supports the limited SVG tiny format 
(http://www.w3.org/TR/SVGMobile12/). This means as an example that text 
elements do not support <tspan/> childs with a delta y.

* Export from print composer:
   - No clipping/masking of map-data to the map boundaries. Workaround: 
after import in Inkscape, Illustrator or Corel, add a rectangle and 
change it into a rectangular mask and apply them to map group
   - Symbols are exported as raster instead of vector
   - structure of export SVG could be improved and id's could be added 
to better understand the document tree of the output
   - some unnecessary elements are exported.ex

What I can recommend is:
- use the newest Inkscape version (0.47) and avoid multiline text
- save as "Optimized SVG" and not "Inkscape SVG" to keep the filesize 
smaller. Optimized SVG means that the output runs through SVG scour
- in the Inkscape preferences -> SVG output enable the checkbox "inline 
attributes"
- optionally run the output manually through SVG scour (a python 
commandline script) for additional manual optimization 
(http://www.codedread.com/scour/)

Inkscape 0.47 contains Scour, but offers only limited commandline 
switches, not complete control over scour as you can get with the 
commandline version of scour.

Meanwhile I will see if I can extend scour to solve the issue of 
multiline text with tspans. I can't promise when, though ...

Hope this helps,
Andreas


John C. Tull wrote:
> Hi Andreas,
>
> Tim said you were the resident svg guru. I have been running into problems with svg images I have created in Inkscape coming through garbled when rendered in qgis. Tim mentioned a minisvg spec, but I cannot find anything on that from a google search.
>
> Is there a means to output svg files from Inkscape or some other for of conversion to make svg files meet the requirements of qgis?
>
> Thanks,
> John