[Gridflow-dev] [PD] pd2png : screenshots of patchs

[Jonathan Wilkes]

On 05/20/2013 12:12 AM, Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
> Le 2013-05-15 à 18:46:00, s p a écrit :
>
>> Well ... basically to me the way to go is really with SVG as a 
>> starting point. Because once you have SVG, you can use one of hundred 
>> different tools to convert to PNG, JPG or any image format you can 
>> dream of.
>
> Well, that's not a real reason. There are plenty of image conversion 
> tools from many formats to many others. Several other formats were 
> already convertible by hundreds of tools before svg existed.
>
> The reason you pick one of the « vector » formats is because you want 
> a scalable picture, and the reason you pick one of the raster formats 
> is because you want to have it just like it is on screen. In that 
> sense, converting a patch directly to a vector format is not a 
> « screenshot ».
>
> And within the vector formats, ps and pdf have been plenty portable 
> since very long. The claim of higher portability (« even more 
> cross-platform » in your other mail) looks like just another epistle 
> from the Holy Church of XML, who talk like they invented 
> interoperability and as if their formats were magically better at it.

Svg _should_ be better because every modern browser supports it and you 
can easily put it into an html document (even without javascript) just 
like you can put a png or jpeg into an html document.  You cannot do 
this with ps or even pdf so they are nonstarters.

However, most web blogging/social-networking software seems to support 
them to the same degree that browsers support displaying postscript 
files.  You've got to get in and change settings, and that's not 
possible if you don't own the server (as on a forum or social networking 
site).

In this case, I think it's probably best to allow exporting directly to 
a common image format like png.  Not because it's pixel-exact, but 
because you can throw it into any forum on the web _today_.  And that 
sucks because it punishes people who are vision impaired (not scalable 
and no descriptions of content).  But maybe I'm being cynical and we 
should just use the right tool for the job and write detailed, 
user-friendly guides for how to make one's Wordpress site seamlessly 
support svgs.

-Jonathan

>
>
>
> PS : I'm not replying on pd-list because I'm not subscribed.
>
>  ______________________________________________________________________
> | Mathieu BOUCHARD ----- téléphone : +1.514.383.3801 ----- Montréal, QC
>
>
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