I would like to generate some diagram style graphics using SVG and use text in the diagrams. My problem is, how to know the size of the text in advance to be able to adjust the rest of the layout accordingly. To make this explicit: I'm not talking about SVG in a browser. I would like to work with fixed units and generate PDF for printing for example. So if I use a 12pt font, it should also be printed as 12pt font.
To have a more concrete example: Lets assume I have the three strings "bla", "blablub" and "blubblablub". I would like to print them in a given 12pt font, determine the string size and enclosing boxes and draw the biggest sized box around all of them. The idea is to have equally sized boxed around all, based on the longest text.
Could somebody give me a hint how to do that or why it is not possible? Searching for this topic, I only get some JavaScript tricks in the browser, which usually involves rendering the text and then re-rendering everything again.
Related
I'm generating some simple svg for data visualization and as part of that I need
to render several lines of text. I'm using the simple text/textspan. However when
determining when to break the line, I need to know the width of the string. Note that I am not using javascript, these are static svg diagrams. My manual mockups work fine on all three platforms(Mac/Windows 10/Linux) in several different browser. I've been searching, but all attempts to find anything about string widths involves dynamic SVG and javascript. Is there any data anywhere on the character widths of the default fonts? I'm using rather simple svg. I'm using the default transform and coordinate space as well. Or do I have to write a javascript test page to return the widths?
Thanks.
The standard font is determined by settings of the renderer. Browsers will use the same font they use for HTML content, set by the user and depending on fonts installed on their system. That means text size will differ for each end user.
There is no way around measuring the text after rendering.
Is there a way to integrate a shape (e.g. a <rect>) in an SVG text as if it were a character?
It should look something like this (with a simple rectangle in this example, but possibly arbitrary other graphics in the actual application):
In other words, essentially like the common functionality found in text editors (such as MS Word or OpenOffice Writer) to anchor an image in the text flow rather than at an absolute position.
Ideally, the markup should be as straightforard as this (pseudo-code):
<text><tspan>Hello, </tspan><rect width="10px" height="10px" fill="blue"/><tspan>World!</tspan></text>
However, according to the specification, it is not possible to add shape elements directly as children of either <text> or <tspan>. <altGlyph> sounds like it might be a solution, but I failed to find out how to use it, and examples for that element are extremely sparse.
I'm trying to understand how Paperjs works and I would like to know if it's possible to write text vectors, if yes how?
I tried Raphael.js before this, and I was almost satisfied with it but it seems that Paperjs is more (cross)browser compliant for some reasons, right?
Some examples would be nice!
Thanks for your answers.
Yes, it is definitely possible to create texts in paper.js.
var awesometext = new paper.PointText();
awesometext.content='awesome';
paper is better than raphael because its canvas based. Canvas is better supported on mobiles/tabs and hence the advantage of paperjs. However, since canvas is just a bitmap implementation, zooming will make canvas renderings not so good compared to svg renderings like in raphael.
So, it depends on what your priorities are for your application..
Paperjs handles text-scaling well, but it uses canvas' native methods to render the characters, so you can't access the vector data once they're drawn. But I imagine you'd only want vector characters to manipulate their shape, for example, morphing one letter into another, or creating a font editor.
If you just want hi res text then paperjs can do that no problem... or you could just set a bigger font size.
If you want to render text as vectors in paperjs, have a look at https://nodebox.github.io/opentype.js/
Is there any program that can convert a file into an animated gif by taking the bytes (whatever I see on an editor is seen) and producing them on frames? Im trying to change a large script I wrote into an image so that if I run it, it looks like as if the code is scrolling. I would use photoshop, if I knew how to use it. Even then, the code is really big, so I dont want to be doing it frame by frame.
Whatever you see on the editor screen is ... a screenfull, so why not a screen capture program like http://www.faststone.org/FSCaptureDetail.htm
However, I suspect that you want to convert the entire file to a gif, since you talk of scrolling. Is that so?
If so, be aware that animated GIFs are limited to 8 frames, so you might want to convert to another movie format.
You could, for instance, Google for "text to MPEG". If nothing does it directly, get something that adds subtitles & make your video a solid white background *or match your webpage).
Maybe simpler is something like this ...
A Scrolling Text Applet - Now Free. - Provide an animated look and feel to your web pages. Scrolling Text is a Java applet that will automatically size itself to the available area given to it by the HTML form via the WIDTH and HEIGHT properties of the APPLET tag. There are many configurable features of this applet including title, colors, font size and style, border width and color, graphics, background images etc.
Configurable parameters including;
Background Color - Define your desired background color
Title - If you want a stationary title then include this parameter
Font Size and Style - All text can have it's own Font size and style
Text Color - Specify the color of the text with this one
Border Width and Color - If you require a border then define it with these 2 parameters
Scroll Speed - Customise the Scroll Speed
Display Time - Vary the Display time of each page
This applet is easy to implement and configure and along with the example and help files you should have no trouble implementing your own customised Scrolling Text in your web pages. No understanding of java programming is required, everything is adjusted by parameters in the HTML tags.
Now FREE.
+1 for an interesting question.
I'm interested how to construct certain kinds of layout in RTF documents, ideally using techniques that do not depend only on the most recent RTF standards, and that are "native", i.e., they do not involve embedding other representations, like picture files. In particular:
In Postscript and DVI, I can specify a coordinate at any time that the next text will be printed at: can this be done with RTF?
Can RTF compose characters through overstriking?
Can lines, outline boxes and filled boxes be drawn, with their geometry specified either absolutely, or relative to text?
You can use the \pvpg \phpg \posx123 \posy123 construct after
you start a paragraph with \pard to position it relative to the top left of the page. See: http://biblioscape.com/rtf15_spec.htm#Heading39
Yes, but it's rather involved, and I think it was only introduced in RTF 1.5. See the drawing objects section of the spec. Here is a basic example of drawing a box (I'm not sure it's entirely valid but it should give you an idea of how to work with drawing objects):
{\rtf1\ansi\deff0
{\pard {\*\do
\dobxcolumn \dobypara
\dprect \dpx0 \dpy0 \dpxsize1000 \dpysize1000 \dplinew25
}\par}
}
If you're doing any work with RTF it's worth picking up O'Reilly's RTF Pocket Guide.
I don't believe this is possible. You'd need to use tabs and newlines to get the text where you want it.
Not really, unless \strike and \strikedl count.
http://www.biblioscape.com/rtf15_spec.htm#Heading52 says drawing objects are an option, and so is inserting images, but neither are really "native", both being absent in the first RTF specs. (And the latter is a bad choice for i.e. just a line.)