I am launching today
an online app to edit SVG resources.
The (long term !) purpose of project svgreal is to let anyone with a browser open and edit any SVG resource locally or on the Internet. Real svg resources, not just svg resources originally created by svgreal itself. Users should be able to open multiple svg images, copy cut and paste interesting bits of them, edit existing elements and author new ones, and push the resulting new image anywhere locally or on the internet.
As anyone who knows SVG will tell, the goal is very ambitious: the SVG specification is very large, and connects with several other equally vast standards (CSS, SMIL, javascript events), which require support to at least a certain degree. The first snapshot published today is the result of one year of development efforts, so you can make your own guess as to how long the project is going to take before it matures into something truly useful. Of course contributions to the project from other people could alter this roadmap.
What do I have today ?
- A multiple document interface, based on GXT, which lets one open several SVG documents, coming from your filesystem, an URL or the openclipart project.
- Navigation in SVG documents, where one can see the structure of the documents, highlight elements, rotate and zoom you view, change the viewbox of the document
- Create and edit basic elements: lines, circles, ellipses, polygon, polylines, path, images, using either mouse based graphical manipulators, or precise numerical coordinates in a property sheet.
- Edit element transforms.
- Re-order elements, drag and drop them between documents
- Edit graphical attributes of existing elements (line thickness, paint, dash arrays, …)
- Undo / redo
- Export back to SVG
These features have only tested them on a limited set of SVGs (ie: the app is very likely to crash or not be stable with other SVGs). To reach industrial strength quality, a lot of polishing of the existing features is going to be required as well as unit tests to guarantee non-regression on these patches.
What are the missing features I am beginning to work on in 2012 ?
- Number one priority: stability, bug fixing, broaden the usability of the program and number of platforms supported.
- Missing graphical elements: use, text
- Support for gradients and patterns
- Scripting and automation
- Support for saving to various locations (local storage, cloud, http WebDAV)
- Port to GXT3.x
- Support for missing graphical properties (such as preserveAspectRatio)
What are the other missing features
- Support for animation
- Support for styles defined in external CSS documents
- SVG filters
- Clipping, masks, text on paths…
- Import or Export from other formats
- Nested SVG elements, switch, …
- Fonts
- Advanced drawing tools
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