Re: [Gnuplot-bugs] SVG font rendering issue

[Ethan M. <merritt@u.washington.edu>]

On Wednesday 23 May 2007 09:34, pl...@pi... wrote:
> @Ethan:
> 
> >>
> Re-writing the enhanced text layer just because svg viewers fail
> to fully implement the standard is not likely to happen.
> I am just hoping that as time passes and svg becomes more common,
> the viewers will improve.
> >>
> 
> I quite understand your point but if ppl have to avoid using svg because  
> programs can provide useful output (albeit technically correct , std  
> compliant) then this adoption is not going to happen soon.

I understand that.  The SVG output by gnuplot is admittedly very ugly.
If I were starting from scratch to implement a  program with SVG output,
I would put a priority on using the most widely supported subset of the
full standard, and design it with XML-like syntax in mind.
But in the case of gnuplot's text formatting, the basic infrastructure
was already in place, based on the original PostScript implementation.
It was possible to map the current set of operations [most of them 
anyway] onto legal SVG output, so that's what I did.  Unfortunately,
it turns out that some of the operations are not well supported by the
common browsers.

In the case of the mozilla/firefox SVG code, this has been listed as a
known issue in Bugzilla for about 3 years now. I see that some progress
has been made just in the last couple of months, so maybe we won't have
to wait very much longer for better native SVG support.


> http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/fonts.html#font-size-props

> I have tried editing OP's xhtml file and found that defining font-size:5pt  
> rather then font-size:5 DOES work and produce the output he's looking for.
> 
> That would surely be a trivial fix to explicitly state the units and may  
> give more reliable rendering elsewhere as well.
> 
> Could you consider implementing that in CVS?

Sure. Thanks.


-- 
Ethan A Merritt            Courier Deliveries: 1959 NE Pacific
Dept of Biochemistry
Health Sciences Building
University of Washington - Seattle WA 98195-7742