[IPython-dev] SVG figures status report

[Fernando Perez]

Hi Bob,

On Sun, Jun 24, 2012 at 11:01 AM, Bob McElrath <bob+ipython at mcelrath.org> wrote:
> I thought I'd give a status report on using SVG figures in IPython.

[...]

> Therefore, I think SVG as the default figure format is not an option now, or in
> the foreseeable future, and SVG as an option should be discouraged.

Thanks for this detailed and careful assessment of the situation.
It's an unfortunate state of affairs, especially as it strongly
tempers my enthusiasm for tools like d3.js being truly effective in
the notebook.  But better to know than to enthusiastically build
things that will in practice only work for toy problems but will
inescapably fail to scale in more complex production environments.

> Maybe people already knew all this, but I thought I'd share my findings, because
> I wanted to use SVG instead.

Not necessarily, I think this analysis is extremely valuable.

In this spirit, have you had a chance to play with tools like this?

http://paperjs.org/about/

Since it goes directly to the canvas element and is not SVG, I wonder
if interactive figures built upon it would fare any better than the
SVG ones.

Cheers,

f