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

Welcome to the Graphics 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

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What did I do to this SVG file?

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

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

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)

Fixed by outlining text, saved text data in separate invisible group—Love, Kelvinsong talk 15:46, 31 January 2014 (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

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

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

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)

• 
• 

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

That's because what you usually see of an image is a pre-rendered thumbnail (png-format), which is usually created only once when the file is uploaded. The SVG-renderer has been updated several times so that thumbnails of older SVG-images look different. I have re-generated the 500px-thumbnail (the one used on the file description page) of File:கனகாங்கி.svg so that it should be up to date now (you might need to clear your browser cache to see it). See Help:Purge for instructions on how to do this. --El Grafo (talk) 17:06, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

 Done Purged them all. If they still look different for you: Please purge your browser’s cache or enable JavaScript in your Browser's settings. (You only need to do it once.)

Internet Explorer: press Ctrl+F5, Firefox: hold down ⇧ Shift while clicking Reload (or press STRG+⇧ Shift+R), Opera/Konqueror: press F5, Safari: hold down ⇧ Shift+alt while clicking Reload, Chrome: hold down ⇧ Shift while clicking Reload --El Grafo (talk) 17:12, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

That's nice -- you made File:Shield Trinity (zh-cn).svg look like File:Shield Trinity (zh-hant).svg, but the older appearance of File:Shield Trinity (zh-cn).svg was actually better. Thanks for the downgrade... These long-term annoying font inconsistencies and inadequacies will really have to be resolved at the developer/system level, not by purging the caches of individual files. AnonMoos (talk) 19:09, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

In the case of Tamil (ta / thamizh) font, it seems to be good now than old fonts (see earlier comment above on 20 February, 2012)... hence the purge solution worked fine. VasuVR (talk, contribs) 10:14, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Really didn't do anything for the Chinese, though... AnonMoos (talk) 00:23, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

New help-page: From invalid to valid SVG: Chemdraw-files

Take a look at the new page I have made for editing SVG-files so that they are W3C-valid: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:SVG/basichttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:SVG/basic -- 09:39, 22 March 2014 User:Wereldburger758

Thanks for the work, but I find the page pretty bad. Absolute over complication, ungroup and path-converting has nothing to do with valid-SVG. You use Regexp and than Perl?? That can make Regexp alone! But anyway, it's also completely pointless (to valid SVG) and also Inkscape can this do alone without Regexp and Perl!?!? -- 12:30, 22 March 2014 User:Perhelion

Removing watermarks

Hi. Could somebody remove watermarks from these images? File:Muradkhanov.jpeg, File:Muradkhanov.jpeg, File:Группа депутатов Второй Государственной думы.jpeg, File:Mamed Tagi Aliyev.jpeg, File:Khalil bek Khasmamedov.jpeg, File:Akhverdov.jpeg. --Interfase (talk) 08:43, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Would you please kindly ask at Photography workshop for more help. Its the place retouche experts visit frequently. --Maxxl2 - talk 08:50, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

OK. Thanks. --Interfase (talk) 09:25, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

More SVG font issues

Will MediaWiki's SVG font rendering ever be fixed? I wasn't aware it is so limited. This file -- that I've been nagged for years to convert -- doesn't render because it uses Microsoft's default Calibri font, which must be one of the most widely used in the world. No, I'm not going to redesign it with a different font; the SVG version will just be tagged for deletion. What a waste of time. --Glen Fergus (talk) 02:10, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Commons has a number of SVG font-rendering difficulties, but it really cannot be blamed for not having proprietary commercial fonts installed on the server, something which is not feasible for several reasons. The old standby is "convert text to paths", or you could ask for Google Carlito (which is supposedly a quasi-clone of Calibri) to be installed if the license terms are compatible... AnonMoos (talk) 02:32, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

You should install the Liberation fonts (no matter how much you hate that) and use them in your SVG so you always has the closest results between your computer and the Wikimedia render without resorting to "convert text to paths" which horribly increases the document size and makes it painfully difficult to localize to other languages. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 02:56, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Converting text to paths is theoretically bad, but sometimes it's just about the only practical solution to certain difficulties. Look at the tortured upload history of this quite basic file: File:Simple inverse relationship chart.svg... -- AnonMoos (talk) 12:49, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Good example, because there is no bad rendering of the font?!? (the different text position comes from SVG)

• text https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/archive/5/53/20121029235833!Simple_inverse_relationship_chart.svg/220px-Simple_inverse_relationship_chart.svg.png
• path https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/53/Simple_inverse_relationship_chart.svg/220px-Simple_inverse_relationship_chart.svg.png

-- Perhelion (talk) 14:10, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

At various times in the past, the thumbnail-size renderings (180px or 220px) for the various textual SVGs that were the current file version at the moment have been either almost unreadable, or highly unaesthetic -- while the thumbnail-size renderings of the text-converted to path SVG (25k) were never problematic (something which has encouraged a number of uploaders to simply convert all text to paths to abruptly cut short all the fluctuating SVG font problems). It would be nice if all SVG font difficulties have finally been resolved, but it would be difficult to believe this without some further evidence... AnonMoos (talk) 03:18, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Actually from my personal experience SVGs with text converted to paths looks reliably mediocre (). In contrast SVGs with real text normally look quite well – as long as they are done correctly. The problem is, that the author himself as well as the SVG editing software both have the potential to seriously mess up the SVG which will then result in actual bad rendering. Most of the time this can be shadowed by converting texts to paths, but most of the time it could be solved in the first place by optimizing/correcting the workflow. Bad rendering because of real libRSVG bugs is very rare these days – it's only the last element in the chain and therefore always blamed for everything (even if it's not the renderer's fault at all).
In my personal opinion text should never be converted to paths if not totally necessary (at it's almost never necessary). The slightly increased "compatibility" does by far not outweighs the downsides (e.g. impossibility to edit text / translate graphics). --Patrick87 (talk) 08:57, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

If one does decide to convert text to paths, it's a good idea to leave a copy of the original text in the image as an invisible object. —LX (talk, contribs) 13:38, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

AnonMoos. If you don't like how text look when the SVG is downsized to ~200px wide, why don't you scale down the native dimension to of the canvas and adjust the text position and size accordingly in the first place? -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 07:31, 10 April 2014 (UTC)