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pont-us / PuffinPlot

A program to plot and analyse palaeomagnetic data
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Evaluate new libraries for graphics export #302

Open pont-us opened 3 years ago

pont-us commented 3 years ago

PuffinPlot's current graphics export options are a little unsatisfying: there are two options each for PDF and SVG export, since I added FreeHEP export when a reviewer of the PuffinPlot paper complained about problems with vector export using Batik and iText. We thus have three different libraries which between them produce two different variants of each format. Clearly it would be better to have one well-tested, reliable export option for each format. It would also be good to add EPS export, which might be more reliable than PDF or SVG for import into Adobe Illustrator.

There are a couple of promising vector export libraries which might solve some of these problems: jfreesvg and vectorgraphics2d. The first only exports SVG; the second, PDF, SVG, and EPS. Both of them are free software, and both are very compact compared to the current libraries -- this gives me a better chance of being able to correct any deficiences myself, since the source code will be more navigable than e.g. Batik. (It will also cut PuffinPlot's download size a bit, but most of the bulk is Jython so the overall effect won't be huge.)

For EPS export there is also http://www.abeel.be/wiki/EPSGraphics and https://github.com/matmas/java-eps-graphics

It would also be worth doing a more thorough web search for other options: evidently a lot has happened in this domain since I last evaluated the available libraries.

pont-us commented 3 years ago 
Bugs Everywhere data:
Created at: 2014-11-19 09:34:22
Status: open
Severity: minor
UUID: 492a7a96-2421-4fa7-98d2-d475c8db015c
Short name: a88/492
pont-us commented 3 years ago

2015-10-22 11:01:03

I've performed some tests with jfreesvg, vectorgraphics2d, and orsonpdf, as well as the three existing libraries. The biggest problem appears to be superscripts in attributed text objects. Only FreeHEP handles them correctly; other libraries either ignore them or render every attributed text object as a path.

The evaluation suggests to me that I should keep FreeHEP and drop the other two existing libraries (which seem to have inferior performance). I should also add the EPS and EMF backends for FreeHEP export, since these formats might be more tractable than PDF and SVG for many users, and with the main FreeHEP library already included the extra backends are relatively lightweight.

The most compelling feature of JFreeSVG is the ability to explicitly control grouping via hints. This would be very convenient for grouping the elements of each plot, and none of the other libraries can do it. Batik puts everything in one group, which isn't too inconvenient. Batik creates bizarre subgroups of seemingly unrelated elements, which necessitates full ungrouping before any useful editing can be done. Despite this, I still think the best choice is to standardize on FreeHEP for now: the correct attributed string handling and multiple backend support are heavily in its favour.

UUID: a6d84a2a-a7c5-4c3b-b9e4-07683b2995b3

pont-us commented 3 years ago

2016-10-04 19:42:50

Last comment should have read: FreeHEP puts everything in one group (and Batik creates bizarre subgroups). Also, on latest test, Batik SVG export seems to produce an incorrect page size.

Another note: FreeHEP SVG seems about three times the size of equivalent Batik SVG. Looking at source, this may be due to much larger (excessive?) number of decimal places used for positions in FreeHEP output.

UUID: 8c43f174-0ed0-45b2-9bf7-f7c3a87a179d