XD16, and XD17 trial SVG import issue

[simsmj]

Egg, it's also just plain rude. Whoever created the original SVG artworks in their Stock Illustrations didn't set their dimensions at random, the authors chose a size they deemed appropriate and suitable to the content, and we are talking about people with skills and talent for the most part, but Xara has overruled them to choose an arbitrary and irrelevant 300px, deeming that Xara users can easily amend the size themselves. And indeed they can but whatever size they come up with may not be what the original author intended, and in the case of SVGs like mine, the exact original size is the only appropriate one, and nobody else but me would know what that size was supposed to be without examining the SVG file itself.

I know that SVGs are meant to be re-scalable, but that doesn't mean that all scales are equally useful or appropriate; for many SVGs the actual scale used might not matter much at all, but it's wrong to think that it never matters.

At best Xara could take the view that they are showing a large thumbnail of the original, but to not offer the original sized version as an option could be seen as thoughtless and inconsiderate.

On a related matter I note that Xara17 is now treating things like 'rotation' of objects as specific attributes of an object, so selecting an object will show its current rotation state in the rotate field in the infobar. If you export it as an SVG it now contains the rotation information;

rect x="-113.385" y="-113.385" width="226.771" height="226.771" transform="translate(131.216 695.164) rotate(90)" This is an 8cm blue square but the units are pt as are all Xara SVG exports.

(Xara, I would like to choose the export unit, pretty please, or at least have it use the current user unit.)

This was from my sizing experiments in Xara17 a day or two ago. I'm still tweaking my SVGKam SVG loader code, and having this kind of stuff in them is useful for making sure my code is robust enough to handle them properly.

Mike

Edit: Ha, just saw Handrawn's crosspost! Egg's 300px came I think from his video where he used my 2nd ship counter which of course was the 300px resized SVG import of my original smaller ship counter.

[handrawn]

Good point about the dimensions not being set at random in the OCC... I don't use it, but from that point of view it is just as bad a practice as outside of the OCC

[ss-kalm]

It's just wrong on ALL counts as far as I can see.

There is NO reason why the program, should resize anything to whatever size. There's no reason why the end user can't be relied upon to use their own judgement for final sizing.

[handrawn]

those of us who use the program to create vector asset/drawings/designs may well think this way - but it is not the way xara think it seems...

lets look at this:

Because the original vector files vary enormously in size, graphics larger than around 300px are scaled down.

patronising - just like the 'squish'

[ss-kalm]

This really shouldn't be the way a PROFESSIONAL GRAPHIC DESIGN APPLICATION thinks. If it was just WEB DESIGNER, I could understand it, but I have no idea what the programmers thoughts (or lack of) are here.

[handrawn]

sadly, i don't think they actually care, based on passed experience

[mega]

Thanks guys for the investigation, you were exactly true: we always resize SVGs on import, that was done to keep all imported graphics nearly the same size, as was requested when importing from a certain source. You can disable it through the registry key: HKCU\SOFTWARE\Xara\SVGFilter\6.1\scale - set this to 0 to avoid resizing on load. On the next release we'll come up with a smarter decision on keeping original SVG dimensions vs resizing in only certain conditions.