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I am currently using Kinetic.js to develop Web-based image display for astronomy: http://js9.si.edu. Kinetic works nicely for overlaying geometric regions, catalogs, contours etc. on top of an astronomical image.

However, when generating a publication-quality PDF of the image with its overlays, it is imperative that the 2D graphics (but not the image) be scalable, in order to accommodate reviewer-suggested changes. One way to do this is to make the JS9 print function bring up a new window containing the image with SVG-based overlays, the latter having been converted from Kinetic. For various reasons, this is preferable to saving the state of the JS9 display for reload at a later time in order to rescale and create a new bitmap-based PDF (using scale up and CSS scale down techniques).

The only Stackoverflow question I can find regarding exporting SVG from Kinetic.js recommends using fabric.js:

Export KinteticJS drawing to SVG?

A related question discusses HTML canvas to SVG more generally:

Method to convert HTML5 canvas to SVG?

The recommended solution (http://code.google.com/p/canvas-svg/) would have to be integrated directly into Kinetic since it manipulates the canvas context (aside from being incomplete).

Are there any plans for Kinetic.js to support export to SVG to accommodate scalable printing? Assuming not, does anyone have programming suggestions that would allow continued use of Kinetic? It's a bit hard to believe that we are the only community facing the problem of drawing on a bitmapped canvas while needing to print scalable graphics.

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ericmandel
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  • More info please :-) What Kinetic primitives are you using: circle,rect,text, etc? Are your shapes heavily nested: groups inside groups inside groups? – markE Mar 24 '14 at 21:19
  • Shapes are not heavily nested. In general, we're using single-level groups consisting of one central primitive shape (circle, rect, polygon, ellipse) combined with the usual anchors for resize/rotate (text will be added to the group in a future release). Annuli are similar but consist of n concentric primitive shapes, with the anchors situated on the outermost primitive. (Astronomical data analysis also utilizes the concept of boolean logic between these sorts of shapes but these will not nest, so far as I can see. They will group.) – ericmandel Mar 24 '14 at 21:51

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