Commons:Graphics village pump

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Graphics community: Graphic Lab · Graphics Village Pump · Picture Requests · Photography Critiques

color palette logo Welcome to the Graphics village pump!

A village pump

Hello and Welcome to this Graphics village pump of Commons. This Graphics village pump aims to provide help and information about the several Graphic Labs spread in the Wikipedias, and to be the technical support forum for all the local Labs, graphists (graphic artists), and users interested in graphic works, and is a page where graphists and users from all the Labs can talk about graphics, tutorials, graphic software, help to build new Graphic Labs, etc. Also for exchanging opinions, ideas, protocols, and ways of improvement.

See also: Other graphic community pages (list on top) | Graphics abilities page | Graphic Tool | Project Insignia | Stroke Order Project

Important discussion pages (index)
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Contents


Graphics village pump archives:

May_2013 [edit]

A cropped picture of a village pump in a small town in the province of Arezzo, Tuscany

Add Topic Edit Discussion

What did I do to this SVG file? [edit]

Usenet traffic per day (en).svg

I recently uploaded a new version of File:Usenet traffic per day (en).svg, which was generated by Gnuplot and edited in Inkscape. I converted the text to paths, but the text is horribly mangled as rendered by MediaWiki; Safari has no problem displaying the text correctly. Purging the page's cache had no effect. Am I doing something wrong or is this a bug in MediaWiki? Cheers, bdesham ★ 15:44, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I fixed the problem by having Gnuplot generate the SVG directly (instead of converting Gnuplot's PDF to SVG with Inkscape). My issue still applies to older versions of the file. --bdesham ★ 15:51, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
You declare Helvetica as a font, but the svg backend only knows these fonts meta:SVG fonts
AnonMoos, I opened a new bug, concerning the declaration of SVG fonts here [1]--DieBuche (talk) 20:10, 25 May 2010 (UTC)


Wikimedia renders Deja and Liberation fonts badly [edit]

Liberation Sans font and saved as plain SVG. 300 pixel thumb. Check the 200px and 500px renderings, even 2000px has a minor problem.
Liberation Sans font and saved as plain SVG. 200 pixel thumb.
And this renders Ok after five path elements were manually removed, see description for full details

Or is it the way I am using Inkscape 0.47? All these files render perfectly in my Opera browser (version 10.54 build 21868) and I have installed DejaVu and Liberation Sans fonts on Windows Vista.

Here is the start of the SVG code for File:Ikaros solar sail key liberation sans plain.svg:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>

<svg
  xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
  xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
  version="1.1"
  width="643.56433"
  height="257.42575"
  id="svg2852">

 <defs
    id="defs2854" />
 <g
    transform="translate(-58.921894,66.069669)"
    id="layer1">
   <text
      x="69.253036"
      y="-29.653135"
      id="text3167"
      xml:space="preserve"
      style="font-size:32px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;font-stretch:normal;text-align:start;line-height:100%;writing-mode:lr-tb;text-anchor:start;fill:#000000;fill-opacity:1;stroke:none;font-family:DejaVu Sans;-inkscape-font-specification:DejaVu Sans"><tspan
        x="69.253036"
        y="-29.653135"
        id="tspan3169">1</tspan></text>

Here is the SVG code for the first use of the Liberation Sans font "Tip mass 0.5 kg" (which renders fine):

    <text
      x="164.86249"
      y="-28.66876"
      id="text3304"
      xml:space="preserve"
      style="font-size:32px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;font-stretch:normal;text-align:start;line-height:100%;writing-mode:lr-tb;text-anchor:start;fill:#000000;fill-opacity:1;stroke:none;font-family:Liberation Sans;-inkscape-font-specification:Liberation Sans"><tspan
        x="164.86249"
        y="-28.66876"
        id="tspan3308">Tip mass 0.5 kg</tspan></text>

And here is the SVG code for the "Main body" text (which renders bad):

   <text
      x="159.24414"
      y="179.82025"
      id="text3304-3-6"
      xml:space="preserve"
      style="font-size:32px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;font-stretch:normal;text-align:start;line-height:100%;writing-mode:lr-tb;text-anchor:start;fill:#000000;fill-opacity:1;stroke:none;font-family:Liberation Sans;-inkscape-font-specification:Liberation Sans"><tspan
        x="159.24414"
        y="179.82025"
        id="tspan3684">Main body</tspan></text>

-84user (talk) 18:32, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Update: In case bugzilla:8898 is relevant to this problem I posted a querying note there linking here. -84user (talk) 19:49, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

More update: I *believe* I have narrowed down the SVG code that causes the rendering problem to a sequence of 5 path elements. See File:Ikaros_solar_sail_key_plain_edited.svg for details. -84user (talk) 20:56, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

More more: File:Ikaros solar sail key plain minusthosefivepaths.svg shows more evidence that the renderer has problems with those five path elements. -84user (talk) 21:10, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Even this version has problems in the 2000px version --DieBuche (talk) 21:19, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
See Commons:Graphics_village_pump/May_2010#SVG_text_rendering for previous complaints along the same lines. If you understand why I had to render text to paths in image File:Simple inverse relationship chart.svg, then please explain it to me... AnonMoos (talk) 10:43, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
All these symptoms strongly suggest to me a low-level bug (like a buffer overrun or something similar) in the rsvg library, further confirmed by the fact that I can reproduce them locally using the rsvg-view utility. It should probably be reported to the developers of that project. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 15:56, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

SVG typography and Wikimedia's PNG renderer [edit]

I've always struggled with Wikimedia's SVG PNG renderer based on font issues. We all know it doesn't allow embedding of fonts, which can be a real pain to the designer. I have recently created File:Integration in Deutsch.svg and File:Integration in English.svg in Adobe Illustrator. I notice after creating the Deutsch, that Illustrator had added a font-family tag for "Myriad", which is ignored by the PNG renderer. So for my next image, the English version, I simply edited the file by hand to remove all references to Myriad. This created an odd result: the PNG render has really messed up letter spacing (specifically after the letter "m"). When I click on the thumbnail to allow firefox to render the SVG by itself, everything looks ok on my setup. As for the Duetsch version, the text in the red boxes in the PNG thumbnail is too larger, while it looks OK when viewing the SVG by itself in Firefox. Because of the typographical limitations in the PNG renderer, I basically have been ignoring most typographical settings, as I don't know what will or will not work with the renderer, but I'm also learning that the default settings are not ideal either. So I'm asking two questions, one general, and one specific. Specifically, what would you suggest be done to fix the two described errors for each image (text runs outside red box in Duetsch, letter spacing is wonky in English)? More generally, what are some good typographic tips that are compatible with the PNG renderer? What settings work? What typefaces are allowed? What works for you? Thanks for any input. Instead of fighting with the renderer, I'm hoping I can learn to work with it, within its very limited scope. Thanks! -Andrew c (talk) 16:26, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Have exactly the same problem. This post is extremely relevent, as I don't know what to do other than trial and error. Jolly Janner (talk) 22:13, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

I have changed the font in both pictures to DejaVu Sans Condensed. For all fonts available see [2]. Uwe Dedering (talk) 18:22, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

OT: I really like the style of the image. --DieBuche (talk) 18:46, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
Not OT: Me too.(but the filename could be better...)  :-) Uwe Dedering (talk) 19:45, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
Use the page test.svg in order to see if the file look like as you want it to on wikipedia. Citypeek (talk) 05:37, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

A Illustrator->SVG graphist here. The only font that reliably displays for me in thumbnail is DejaVu Sans (too bad I prefer other typefaces). I've tried others on the list of "fonts available" like Liberation, Helvetica, and DejaVu Serif; using various combinations of SVG/Adobe CEF/glyphs settings. Some of the other fonts work in the full version, others are changed to a serif font that looks like Times, and I can't figure why and when the strange behaviours occur. Jon C (talk) 16:35, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Introducing SVG Check [edit]

For those of you that didn't catch my announcement on the main village pump a couple of weeks back, I urge you to take a look at Commons:SVG Check. You can leave any comments on the talk page, and I shall endeavour to fix them. Also, your suggestions for which errors can be easily caught and how best to fix them are appreciated: the current debugging code is available at the top of [3], and you can see that the list is not too long at the moment, so I need your help! :) Thanks, Jarry1250 (talk) 12:27, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Didn't know about this page. Thank you for pointing it out. I have bookmarked it. Citypeek (talk) 05:56, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Text shown in bold [edit]

I am completely new to Inkscape and I tried to translate (svgtranslate didn’t work) an image because an article it is used in on Swedish Wikipedia is nominated for featured status, and for this, all images have to be in Swedish. The font looked like Arial so I used Arial and it worked fine. However the text that wasn’t bold became bold when I uploaded it, and a bracket or two were moved. It wouldn’t have been that bad if it weren’t for one original text box that I left, which still isn’t in bold. here’s the original image, and here’s my attempted translation. The text I’m talking about is at the far right (the species). Later I discovered that Arial is problematic and tried to change it using the instructions (replacing fontfamily) but it didn’t seem to help. Does anyone maybe have a solution? Thank you very much! --Lundgren8 (t · c) 20:35, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

More font strangeness [edit]

File:Shield Trinity (zh-cn).svg and File:Shield Trinity (zh-hant).svg have identical font formatting (the only difference being that one was uploaded about a year after the other), yet they display rather differently, with the rendering of the one uploaded last year being more satisfactory. These unexplained variations and retrogressions in font display are what have driven some uploaders to exasperated frustration... AnonMoos (talk) 13:11, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

  • Shield Trinity (zh-cn).svg
  • Shield Trinity (zh-hant).svg
I have seen the same, but should say that for the Tamil script it is better now than before... So much so that I am tempted to re-upload the SVG files with very minor variation in comments or some such thing. VasuVR (talk, contribs) 02:41, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
Here are three images of "similar information" uploaded at 3 different times. -- VasuVR (talk, contribs) 10:14, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

  • Latest upload

  • Oldest upload

  • Intermediate upload

A good gis-book [edit]

Does someone know a good Gis-book? One that tells it all you need to know in order to create maps for wikimedia and wikipedia. I have been searching in vain. Citypeek (talk) 04:53, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Could ask at Commons:Graphic_Lab/Map_workshop... -- AnonMoos (talk) 00:37, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

SVG file loses proportions when displayed as PNG [edit]

Hello all. I just uploaded File:First angle projection symbol.svg and File:Third angle projection symbol.svg, which look rather poor when rendered as a PNG; the originals - visible as Media:First angle projection symbol.svg and Media:Third angle projection symbol.svg look much better.

The main problem lies in the two dashed lines, which in technical drawing terms, are "long chain lines" used to indicate a centre line. I carefully set the styling of those as stroke-dasharray="35 5 5 5" stroke-dashoffset="17.5" (more information at this W3C page), so that two of the longer (35px) dashes would cross at the centre of the circles. Unfortunately, the PNG conversion has lost both the proportions and the balance - the lines and spaces are now of equal length, and there is no crossing at the centre.

How can I fix these images so that the dashed lines retain their intended styling when converted to PNG? --Redrose64 (talk; at English Wikipedia) 16:09, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

The Wikimedia "RSVG" software doesn't like having the values be separated by spaces, that's all. By the way, the "Media:" links mean that the SVG file is rendered by a program on your own computer, and which program this is will be different for different people (depending on how their systems are configured). AnonMoos (talk) 16:22, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Smiley.svg Thank you I see that you've already uploaded replacements. --Redrose64 (talk; at English Wikipedia) 16:44, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

SVG and text [edit]

Hello, when I upload SVG files to Commons, the text often moves, so I have to reposition it on Inskcape, and then to upload the new version. I don't know why it happens, and I could not find any information about the problem. Today i uploaded a new file (Media:Intercommunalités Mayenne.svg), and the text was completely messy on Commons. I tried different things, such as changing fonts and saving the document as plain SVG, but it got worse and worse... If anybody could help, I would be really grateful. Oie blanche (talk) 18:22, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

As with #What did I do to this SVG file? above, you're using an unrecognised font - specifically, font-family:Arial; --Redrose64 (talk; at English Wikipedia) 20:11, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Try converting the text to paths. Decreases editability, but guarentees correct typographical display.—Kelvinsong (talk) 21:21, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Oie blanche -- you can try downloading and installing on your own computer some of the fonts on the server here, such as "Bitstream Vera Sans" or "DejaVu Sans", and theoretically you could see the same thing in your vector editor as in RSVG-generated PNG files here on Commons (though it doesn't always work in practice). You can also preview files without uploading at Commons:SVG Check. The last resort is to convert text to paths... AnonMoos (talk) 09:00, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
I converted text to paths and it worked. Tank you very much! Oie blanche (talk) 06:30, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Improving quality [edit]

Hello all. How could I improve quality of this file I uploaded? It always looks bad when I use it in thumbnail mode.--Avocato (talk) 23:13, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

This file has no vector data content - only raster grafics. --maxxl2 - talk 08:40, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for replying. What should I do then?--Avocato (talk) 18:32, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
Either upload the PNG embedded in the SVG file as a real PNG (with filename ending in".png"), or combine your mainly-vector sources in a way that yields a vector result (how to do this will depend on the software that you use). AnonMoos (talk) 22:14, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
✓ Done File:Egyptian law icon 2.png.--Avocato (talk) 22:26, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Illustrator CS6 SVG formatting options: is there a Wikimedia "Standards & Practices" guide? [edit]

I put "Standards & Practices" there (and again here) in quotes because I do not mean it in the sense of television moralization but rather in the sense of "a set of standardized guidelines which graphics uploaders can follow to facilitate greater compatibility across browsers and to create consistent viewer expectations when viewing graphics files". Which I just made up. But it sounds nice, no?

Anyhow, my concern is this: with Illustrator CS6, when I save an image in SVG format (from AI format) I am confronted with a host of options about which I know relatively little. I have not been able to find any guides on Wikimedia that tell me which ones I should use (and for which kinds of files, e.g., photos vs. diagrams). Am I missing something?

These are the options:

SVG Profiles: SVG 1.0, SVG 1.1, SVG Tiny 1.1, Svg Tiny 1.1+, SVG Basic 1.1, and SVG Tiny 1.2. I already think I understand that we should always use SVG 1.1 as 1.0 is archaic and the various "tiny" options are for mobile devices, of which only a very few can even read these formats. This options seems fairly simple.
Fonts:
  • Type: Adobe CEF, SVG, Outline
  • Subsetting (only available for CEF and SVG): There are a bunch of options here, mostly revolving around combinations of the terms 1. Glyphs, 2. Common English, 3. Common Roman, and (all by itself) 4. None - Use system fonts
Options:
  • Image Location: Embed vs. Link, check-box for Preserve Illustrator editing capability
Advanced Options:
  • CSS Properties: Drop down menu with the following: Presentation Attributes, Style Attributes, Style Attributes (Entity References), and Style Elements
  • Decimal places: 1-7 (I understand that the default setting is 3 and that this is a good option 95% of the time-- for very complicated files dropping it to 1 or even zero can reduce the file size substantially, although at a loss of bezier segment detail/ curvature)
  • Encoding: Options are ISO 8859-1, Unicode (UTF-8), and Unicode (UTF-16)
  • Check boxes: the Advanced Options menu ends with five check boxes for the following: Optimize for Adobe SVG Viewer, Output fewer <tspan> elements, Include Slicing Data, Use <textPath> element for Text on Path,and Include XMP (this last one only becomes available if Unicode (UTF-8) has been selected in the previous menu).

As I have already said, I think I know the optimal settings for most of the images I am uploading, but is there somewhere a written-up guide for creating SVG files in Illustrator CS6 for Wikimedia that covers these things? Please advise. And if there isn't, please advise further. Thank you. KDS444 (talk) 11:07, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Sorry I didn't see your question before. I don't use Illustrator myself, but one thing right off, do not choose UTF-16 format, as this creates larger files and causes compatibility problems for no advantage on Wikimedia Commons. Sometimes Illustrator overwhelms a small amount of vector data with a huge amount of binary data which is of no use other than to Illustrator itself (compare the filesizes on File:Extasy_logo.svg). Not sure what save options control this, but I probably wouldn't select "Preserve Illustrator editing capability" or "Include XMP"... AnonMoos (talk) 04:39, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Stitching maps together [edit]

The maps (West to East)

are made on exactly the same scale, line colouring and match (East West) exactly. (They are however not the same heigth) My intention was to join them together. However photoshop software refuses to work without some common merge area.

Could someone to this? Then I can reorganize the insets and fill in the missing railway lines (areas not covered by the submaps). (Or put arrows on the missing lines)

The same can be done for the maps with Openstreet background, but this is less important. Readers can always use the submaps for precise location. The joined maps are for a an overview of the SNCV network.

The source files are photoshop files with several separate layers. From there maps are exported and uploaded to the commons. Unfortunately photoshop files are not allowed on the commons. This would be very useful if some information has to changed. Smiley.toerist (talk) 12:30, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Stripey corrupt thumbnails bug [edit]

Tracked in Bugzilla (?)
Bug 24854
Tracked in Bugzilla (?)
Bug 41130

File:NorbBlei AlJohnson.jpg's thumbnails are messed up.

Help:JPEG does mention something about ImageMagick getting somehow confused by CMYK JPGs, but the bug in question was fixed, as the history of images in Category:Bug 24854 fixed temporarily shows.

Is this a rare relative? Are there other images affected by this? –⁠moogsi (blah) 11:35, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure that the bug is fixed for anyone whose browser doesn't handle CMYK images. I'll take a look at the image... AnonMoos (talk) 14:24, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
Converted to RGB. AnonMoos (talk) 14:59, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
Figured it out, these were thumbs generated by bugzilla:24854 that then got stuck because of bugzilla:41130. When you uploaded the new image, the thumbnail in the history was regenerated and now looks fine. This also explains why I'd not seen this before; seems like it has a pretty low chance of happening. Thanks –⁠moogsi (blah) 08:08, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Black rectangle appearing [edit]

Hi, I've got a problem File:Osiedla Białołęki.svg, when I was creating this graphic in Inkscape everything was fine, but after importing it to GIMP or uploading to Commons a black rectangle appears on the left side. Does anybody know what causes this and could fix it? Thanks in advance, Kubek15 (talk) 14:05, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Mysterious black rectangles in rendered SVG files are almost always due to Inkscape "flowtext" nonsense, as can be diagnosed at Commons:SVG Check. It may be almost impossible to remove a blank "flowed text" area using some versions of Inkscape. But you were lucky, in that the rectangle was behind the white text (usually it's in front of everything). AnonMoos (talk) 14:38, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
Many thanks! I'm just beginning with SVG and it would have been a pity to waste time I spent making that ;-) Kubek15 (talk) 18:04, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Removing discoloration [edit]

Can somebody tell me how to reduce the green discoloration on File:Mirkevet Hamishneh.jpg? I don't want to make it black and white, since the original paper color gives a nice patina to the image. --Jonund (talk) 20:35, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Advice on SVG, please [edit]

Hi all,

i recently uploaded the comic book image files in Category:Concombre masqué, and very recently read the help page on SVG and such. I am wondering whether there would be any advantage in converting any of the said picts to SVG, and if so, which ones. In particular, i'm wondering about File:Zen01.gif which does not show well in the category-wide slideshow. Thanks in advance? --Jerome Potts (talk) 02:41, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

No advantage at all. The file size will be way bigger than the original raster image. However, I do recommend converting your gif image into png format for better resize quality unless the gif is animated. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 04:23, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
Jerome Charles Potts -- When GIFs with transparent backgrounds are thumbnailed, the transparent area kind of eats into the edges of the non-transparent area, which results in poor-quality thumbnails. Converting to true vector SVG would be an incredibly laborious and time consuming way of trying to get around this problem (while making SVGs with no vector data, only embedded rasters, would also result in poor thumbnail display). The easier method would be either to convert the transparent GIFs to non-transparent ("GIF87A") or re-upload them in PNG format. Note that GIF thumbnails have generally been better in most respects than PNG thumbnails (except for this transparency problem) until a year or two ago... AnonMoos (talk) 04:52, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
No PNG is now almost always better than GIF here in scaling. GIF is here only for animations. -- Perhelion (talk) 06:30, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
That could be true now, but there was about 7 years when it wasn't true... AnonMoos (talk)

Thank you for your answers. --Jerome Potts (talk) 14:23, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

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