Re: [Gnuplot-bugs] SVG font rendering issue

[<pl...@pi...>]

On Thu, 24 May 2007 07:04:21 +0200, Ethan A Merritt  
<merritt@u.washington.edu> wrote:

> On Wednesday 23 May 2007 09:34, pl...@pi... wrote:
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> We'll just end up seeing more and more bloated pdf files with inferior
>> rendering quality.
>
> OK guys.  I've modified the svg terminal to avoid using 'em' units for
> horizontal spacing.  This degrades the horizontal positioning on
> compliant viewers, but it means that firefox etc do something reasonable.
> I've also corrected a scope error on the text path components, which may
> improve the vertical positioning on some viewers as well.  The change is
> in the cvs trees for both 4.2 and 4.3.
>
>> Opera is one of the better renderers I know but it does get this leading
>> wrong because it is not using 5pt font.
>
> Opera?
> I have opera 9.20 installed, but it has no native svg support at all.
> Is there a more recent opera, or are you using some 3rd-party plugin?

No I have Opera 9.20 and dont have any special plugin for svg. Download  
fily type info clearly shows this as a file type handled internally by  
Opera.  I do see "Enable gif/svg animation" in the prefs. (Advances -  
Content , checkbox). I dont know if this has any bearing and dont recall  
if this is on by default.

Opera certainly scales SVG well and make a better job of rendering my  
gnuplot output than firefox.

>
>> 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?
>
> I made that change, but I'm having second thoughts.  It doesn't seem to
> change the behaviour in ksvg at all.  But in firefox, adding the "pt"
> qualifier means that the fonts can no longer be scaled using the browser
> hotkeys ctrl-+  ctrl--  or the size options in the view menu.
>
> I'll try to find a relevant section of the standard.
>
> Try this as a test page:
>
>      http://gnuplot.sourceforge.net/demo_svg/utf8text.html
>

That page seems to come up just about the same in Opera and firefox for me  
(running Gentoo linux untested on win) except that Opera scales fonts  
continously and smoothly. Opera maintains appropriate font size for the  
axes lables as display gets bigger. FFx quickly makes a mess of it with  
huge fonts that overwrite each other and spread onto the graph itself.

FF 2.0.0.3 , seems to render your test page and scale the fonts with  
cntl-+ although not
in a very linear fashion. Code part and fancy stuff on the graph are fine  
but axis labels quickly get too large.

In both the graph gets dumped on top of the script text. That is what I  
have always seen in gnuplot docs and demos so I dont know if it  
intentional or a common bug in things not getting rendered as you intend.

It seems that the page is not well tested for different sized screens. If  
I make the text illegibly small I do get the graph to the right of the  
script text. But at readable font sizes they overlap almost completely.

Thanks for your improvements here. Anything that can help accelerate the  
recognition of this format is good news. We've been stuck with bitmaps way  
longer than was technically necessary.

best regards.