Re: format for editable vector graphics exchange
Re: format for editable vector graphics exchange
- Subject: Re: format for editable vector graphics exchange
- From: Scott Thompson <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 14:55:18 -0500
On Aug 10, 2007, at 2:13 PM, Erik Buck wrote:
Mac OS X does not have a ubiquitous editable vector graphics
format. PDF could potentially become the standard, but it isn't
easy to edit and many Mac OS X applications won't accept it on the
pasteboard.
I have a framework of reusable 2D and 3D graphics classes that read
and write subsets of Autodesk's .3ds and .dxf formats. Neither
format is truly open or even adequately documented. Nevertheless,
they seem to be the current lowest common denominator for cross-
application and cross-platform editable vector graphics exchange.
Are .3ds and .dxf still the best interchange formats available ?
I don't know of any applications that accept and work with .3ds
or .dxf. Do you? I've not found a good cross-platform vector graphics
format. SVG looks the most promising of all those I've looked at.
What _editable_ vector graphics formats are candidates for a Mac OS
X interchange standard in a similar role to the old PICT standard ?
On Mac OS X, PDF is the format that replaces PICT in terms of vector
graphics. Neither PICT nor PDF are particularly well suited to
supporting editable graphics without adding additional metadata to the
graphic itself that can be used to recover the editable features.
(This is what Illustrator does with editable PDF files for example).
Does anybody use Microsoft's "Enhanced Metafile Format" for cross
platform exchange ?
Well, we looked into it and were disappointed. EMF and WMF are
closed, proprietary formats. They are are both tied too closely to GDI
+ for them to be terribly useful. Some folks have reversed engineered
specs and such for parts of EMF and WMF, but those libraries are
typically incomplete. They share a lot in common with PICT files in
that they are largely recorded sets of drawing commands. As such they
are not particularly portable.
Could W3C/Adobe's Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Vector_Graphics
be the answer ? Is there a non-java implementation of SVG that I
can embed in my Cocoa applications ?
Of all the formats I've looked at, SVG is probably the most promising.
If all you want to do is draw SVG graphics in your Cocoa application,
you can do so through the very latest releases of WebKit (i.e. in the
Safari 3 beta and in Leopard).
In terms of composing and constructing SVG documents, though, I'm not
aware of any toolkits that make it particularly easy with Cocoa. That
doesn't mean that they exist, but I haven't seen them. Still, SVG is
"just XML" so putting together a library to create and examine them
should be fairly easy. Another interesting thought is that you might
be able to use the JavaScript support for the SVG DOM in WebKit to
compose graphics.
Is Microsoft's Silverlight going to obliviate SVG ?
To an extent, you're comparing Oranges and Basketballs here. SVG is an
XML-based language for describing graphics (and in particular vector
graphics). SVG in of itself does not define any mechanisms for
running computations, binding to data, communicating over the network,
or anything of that sort.
In contrast, Silverlight is positioned as a rich-media web application
development framework (a direct competitor to Flash). One part of that
framework does handle the rendering of vector graphics, but that's
just a small part of a much larger framework.
Silverlight had a tough row to hoe because most of the functionality
it provides is quickly developing in other places through standards-
based, non-proprietary tools and frameworks. It could be that
Silverlight becomes a vital part of the web infrastructure, but I
suspect (or at least hope) that more open tools like JavaScript and
SVG will temper it's progress.
Is there an implementation of Silverlight that I can embed in my
Cocoa applications ?
You could download the beta of Silverlight for the Macintosh and put
it inside of a WebView within your Cocoa application.
Scott
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