Re: SVGs, word processing applications, printing, and accessibility

David,

weirdly one can just paste an SVG into word, my printer doesn't work in 
colour but I guess it will print fine.

Jim Ley pointed this out at SVG yahoo, I hadn't tried because it seemed 
impossible, can't see how it works now.

Jonathan

On Saturday, May 10, 2003, at 11:33 AM, David Woolley wrote:

>
>> Is it possible to copy and paste an SVG image* from a web page into a
>> word processing application? if so which one, and does it print well?
>
> Given that Microsoft seem to be ignoring SVG (possibly because of the
> heavy involvement by Adobe) and Netscape and Amaya use internal 
> renderers
> for SVG, I suspect that the answer is no, at least for Windows.
>
> What you are most likely to be able to do is to save the SVG and run it
> through some form of SVG to Windows Meta File convertor.  Microsoft may
> have one, but I think that is commercially rather unlikely; they don't,
> for example, allow the the import of XFIG diagrams, the Unix free
> software standard, nor PostScript, except as uninterpreted PostScript
> to be regurgitated to a PostScript printer.
>
> There is a free tool that will convert between vector formats, but the
> last time I used it, it didn't create very good Windows Metafiles.
> It may have improved since.  I don't know if it has improved and I
> can't remember the name at the moment, although it is bundled with
> gsview.
>
> You can always use object packager to include the uninterpreted image
> for viewing with an SVG viewer.
>
> In the case of the use of the Adobe plugin for Windows, any word 
> processor
> that could handle web browser plugins could render the image embedded.
> I'm not sure if the latest Microsoft Wordprocessors are that well
> integrated with the latest Microsoft web browsers.
>
> You may find that some of the free Unix wordprocessors are moving 
> towards
> using SVG as their native vector image format.
>
>> If the whole page is a single SVG, is it possible to do the same to an
>> individual image that forms part of the page?
>
> Define an image; SVG is a whole hierarchy of sub-images.  In any case, 
> this
> is an implementation issue, so depends very strongly on the tool you 
> use
> to render the SVG. In the general case, you would need to convert to an
> editable vector format or use an SVG editor, and export in a supported 
> format.
>
> Like a lot of your questions, this is not about technology but about 
> commercial
> decisions.  When you go beyond simple bitmaps, mixing proprietory 
> tools with
> competing free or semi-proprietory ones is always going to be a 
> problem.
> At the moment, it wouldn't surprise me if Microsoft are hoping that 
> SVG will
> die.
>

Received on Saturday, 10 May 2003 09:04:20 UTC