Draw-to-SVG Converter

A RISC OS utility to convert Drawfiles to SVG

Files

Description

This converts vector-graphic Drawfiles on RISC OS to SVG. It can handle:

• path objects with identical, non-triangular start and end caps, which are converted directly to SVG paths,

• path objects with triangular caps or different start and end caps, which are each converted to a capless path overlayed with another path to draw the caps,

• (transformed) text objects, which are converted to Draw paths, and then to SVG paths — or directly to <text> elements if you choose (thanks to James Bursa's patch; fixed to handle &, < and >),

• group objects, which become <g> elements (optional, as of 2000-09-24), and

• (transformed) sprite objects (but only partially), which become grey (transformed) rectangles (it should be easy to change these into <image> elements manually).

You can also control:

• whether the outer <svg> has x and y attributes,

• whether the input file type is checked,

• whether the output file type is set,

• the scale of the output, by either a factor, or to fit a particular width/height,

• the SVG width of ‘Drawfile-thin’ lines,

• the dimensions of a margin, added after any scaling,

• a background which covers the margin too.

Some optimisations include:

• reducing the need to specify all style properties by being aware of defaults, and

• compressing paths by using relative co-ordinates.

draw2svg is a command-line program, but a WIMP front-end with interactive help is now provided. (The back end is still required.) There is also a configuration file to use it with David Ruck's !ComndCTRL.

Other things to do include:

• converting text objects to <text> elements, using the text-to-path method only as a back-up plan — partially done, but I'd like to improve on it,

• handling JPEG objects,

• handling embedded images by converting them to <image> elements and extracting (and converting) the images, or by trying to convert the images to paths, or by working out URIs of the converted images.

---

Requirements

• Shared Unix Library — Merge into your own set-up with your usual tool, e.g. by running !Boot, selecting System, and dropping the new !System into the window.

---

Tested platforms

Do let me know if you find some hideous bug, please!

RISC OS 3.11; ARM3

RISC OS 3.11; Red Squirrel 0.6

RISC OS 4.02 patch 5; ARM610

RISC OS 4.02 patch 5; StrongARM

RISC OS 5.01; XScale

Erm... okay

〈your (RISC OS) platform here?〉

Draw2SVG has problems on your machine? Describe them (problems and machine type) to me, and include a couple of test files to demonstrate, if you can. These could be made available to others who can provide test results on other platforms.