Hi Experts
I have asked this question before, but got no useful response. Here it is again: I am planning a web site which will perform engineering calculations based on inputs that users will upload via completed spreadsheet templates. The site will do calculations and must then show the results in a graphic that can be (1) copied to the clipboard to paste into Excel, Word, etc, and (2) Printed directly in a neat format.
My question: which technology should I use to draw the graphics? In the past, I have explored SVG and Bitmaps, which I create in a seperate class and then embed in a results page. Any answer which can list available approaches with the pro's and con's of each with a motivated recommendation would be awarded the points. Note: I cannot use off the shelf graphics packages, because I need to draw custom engineering diagrams, not just pie charts etc.
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Glad it helped, there other proprietry technologies such as PDF & EPS, DWG etc, but the SVG spec isn't hard to follow, and generating xml files will always be easier than generating binary files, especially when it comes to making alterations at a later stage.
Also, unless you're generating images that need to be worked on by draughtsmen at a later stage, there's no real point in outputing anything like a DWG.
Thanks for the comment. I have written my own library before to generate SVG graphs/diagrams. It works well combined with JavaScript, as you probably know. But I found users get confused with the steps to get it into Word/Excel. A bitmap seems easier, although it does scale badly, as you noted. The PDF and DWG is not really needed for me, my images are small (A4 at most), and quite simple. Thanks again for the clarification.
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by: oobaylyPosted on 2009-05-20 at 14:37:46ID: 24436547
Bitmaps would probably be the easiest as the functions available are pretty rich. It's simple to generate a canvas of the desired area & use the System.Drawing.Drawing2D.M
Bitmaps also mean that printing should be simple for the end user, as every computer will have an application that can render & print a PNG or BMP file.
The cons with using Bitmaps are that as they are a raster format, to get decent quality, they you may have to generate incredibly images. This may increase bandwidth costs & download times as well as loading on the server as the memory cost for a large Bitmap may be great.
SVGs may be harder as you'll either have to create your own code for generating them (I tried this a few years ago) or finding a library that does the hard work for you (quite possible now). As it's a Vector format, you won't lose any of the quality when zooming into a small scale. Also, as it's plain XML, the size of an SVG file shouldn't be as great as a Bitmap.
The cons for SVG would be that the end user needs an application to render the resulting files. Firefox has native support for SVG, but I''m a big fan of Inkscape.
SVG also should give you the option of embedding raster images if required.
It does depend on your end needs, but I'd go with SVG as long as you can find a good library for generating compliant SVG files and persuade end users to go with installing an application supporting. As an engineer, I find vector diagrams far superior for displaying data, however if the detail isn't a massive requirement, raster graphics may be an easier option.