gEDA-user: Random musings on graphical outputs

["EATON,JOHN (HP-Vancouver,ex1)" <john_eaton@hp.com>]

The point I was making is that when the whole world is going
VHS then you don't want to be the only guy out there preaching
that Beta is Better. You may be right but you will have a hard
time watching movies.


If I can get a graphical output in any format that is heavily
used then I can grab any decent document editor and it will be
able to import that graphic. I have a multitude of paths available.

I can take a gscheme drawing saved as a .png and import it into
a visio page and it works. The same drawing output as postscript
and entered into visio gives me:

    An Error (918) occurred during the action Insert Picture

    The filter is unable to recognize the file


Microsoft Word will take a PNG file but will not accept a PS file.


Raster file formats do have a lot of shortcomings but they give you
the best chance for moving drawings amoung random image tools. It 
would be really nice if the mainstream decided to support every 
engineering drawing format possible but thats not going to happen.

The GAF schematic file format is open source, ascii and drop dead simple.
I would think that the best route would be a bidirection converter
between SVG  <-> SCH files. 


John Eaton



-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Battle [mailto:frustum@pacbell.net]
Sent: Friday, August 30, 2002 9:52 PM
To: geda-user@seul.org
Subject: RE: gEDA-user: background color and PNG out


At 10:19 AM 8/30/02 -0700, John Eaton wrote:

>Vectors? They made sense when pen plotters used actual pens
>and were fun to watch zip back and forth but today everything
>is raster graphics. HP doesn't even sell plotters anymore, they
>have all been relabeled as Printers and use the same basic
>technology in the $50 letter printer as the $20,000 E-size roll
>ones. HPGL is about as dead as Latin. Anything else is just going
>to have to go through a converter.

Huh?  I don't follow the reasoning.

The purpose of using vector representation is that it is scale 
invariant.  If you attempt to zoom in on a PNG or whatever raster graphic, 
all you get are fat pixels.  Yes, such a stroke representation does need to 
go through a converter to be displayed on  a raster device, but so does 
everything else, including PNG graphics.

>The big drivers are digital photos and web graphics. The PNG output
>is good, I can now (Thanks Ales) export a PNG file that I can
>paste into Word or Visio and from there I can go to PDF or the
>web.

If you dump a schematic in SVG (which could be used anywhere that 
postscript it used, but is intended mostly for webpage display), the 
browser displays the image optimally for whatever display you are on.  A 
fixed 800x600 image that takes up 1/4 of my screen might overflow the 
screen of some unlucky guy stuck using only 640x480.

Also, SVG representation of simple lines/areas/shapes is much smaller and 
quicker to download than a picture of the image.  It's like the difference 
between faxing someone the image of an email vs just emailing the ASCII 
characters of that message.

>BTW: Are PNG outputs limited to screen sizes ( 800x600,640x480..etc)
>are can they vary. I would like to place an arbitrary sized frame
>on the schematic and have only the frame and everything in it exported.

My point exactly.  SVG (or postscript) can do this; JPG/GIF/PNG/etc lose 
quality big time if you scale the image significantly.

>John Eaton

-----
Jim Battle == frustum@pacbell.net