What road to take to load an SVG graphic into a FireMonkey app?

Question

There are about four implementations I can think of that are capable of loading SVG graphics into a Delphi application.

One of those, by Mattias Andersson, who is the author of FMX.Canvas.VPR , works with FireMonkey, but he's not yet prepared to release the code.

A second one, by Martin Walter, works with the VCL, but developer has quit Delphi and has no plans to convert to FireMonkey.

A third one, part of the AGGPAS framework, works with the VCL, but no FireMonkey.

A fourth one is in development by Jason Southwell, but no date has been fixed yet.

So my question: what road to take if I want an SVG component today, without trying to reinvent the wheel a fifth (and probably more) time?

Please, provide the url links of the resources you reference. — menjaraz, Jan 11 '12 at 04:06
Done, but someone edited the question so that one was lead to believe that FMX.Canvas.VPR was the SVG implementation, which is not so. Corrected. — Domus, Jan 11 '12 at 16:32
Maybe this provides some useful information as well: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/63607/rendering-svg-with-delphi — Wouter van Nifterick, Jan 12 '12 at 03:16

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 12 '12 at 03:32

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I'm Mattias Andersson -- the author of FMX.Canvas.VPR; I can say that I'm still actively working on the SVG solution. I guess once I have properly added support for gradients and text rendering then I can release a first beta version. I'm relying on TXMLDocument and that is a bit restrictive in what you are permitted to do (IMO), so I've had to invent some workarounds (maybe a better option would have been to implement my own XML class from scratch.) Also, I've had to do some run-time patching of the FireMonkey classes in order to make everything work correctly. The good part is that I'm actually implementing things according to the SVG interface specifications.

answered Jan 12 '12 at 03:32

Mattias Andersson

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Many thanks for your heads-up, Mattias. Will the the loaded SVG graphic be built-up in FireMonkey object descendants so that each can be manipulated separately? – Domus Jan 12 '12 at 13:12
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Well, there is a TSVGImage class that descends from the FMX TControl class. The TSVGImage class has a document property of the TSVGDocument class (a TXMLDocument descendant.) Each node in the TSVGDocument class is a TXMLNode descendant that implements the appropriate SVG interfaces for that particular node type. As an example a TSVGPathElement node implements ISVGAnimatedPathData, ISVGPathElement, ISVGLocatable, ISVGTests, ISVGExternalResourcesRequired, IEventTarget, ISVGLangSpace, ISVGStylable, ISVGElement (if the node represents a visual primitive then it would also have a Paint method.) – Mattias Andersson Jan 13 '12 at 00:07
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Of course one option would be to associate each node with a separate TControl class -- it has some advantages -- you can easily change properties in the object inspector for instance. The drawbacks would be additional memory overhead and it would be more closely tied to FMX (I'm planning to reuse the SVG implementation for a different project of mine that is not dependent on FMX.) – Mattias Andersson Jan 13 '12 at 00:13
Thx. I see this is probably not going to be anywhere near "today", right? :) – Domus Jan 13 '12 at 13:07

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 11 '12 at 06:09

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Getting involved with Mattias Andersson in the development is the best option:

FMX.Canvas.VPR by Mattias Andersson looks promising and VPR is proven to be an excellent project
No spoon-fed SVG FireMonkey component working out-of-the-box is available as of the time of posting (extensive web search made in general).

answered Jan 11 '12 at 06:09

menjaraz

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I fully agree on the excellence of Mattias Andersson's creations. The problem is that I need a component today. Maybe I should ask him to get into some kind of beta. – Domus Jan 11 '12 at 12:16
I've also searched for it in a few but notable french and german delphi forum but were in vain. I suspected that the chinese counterpart might have cooked something interesting: They are very prolific and seem to keep up well with the new Firemonkey. Maybe you may call for special help from chinese speaking SO member. – menjaraz Jan 11 '12 at 15:54

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 21 '12 at 14:25

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The SVG component I've been working on has been released as part of our Apesuite for Firemonkey.

http://arcana.sivv.com/apesuite

answered Jan 21 '12 at 14:25

Jason Southwell

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Bought the beta and having a blast with it! Beautiful piece of coding! – Domus Jan 22 '12 at 01:06
Thanks. Had fun building it. – Jason Southwell Jan 22 '12 at 02:48
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Your site says it is no longer available for purchase. Any plans to change that? – Jim McKeeth Dec 23 '17 at 05:52
It was discontinued due to changes in FM2 that closed loopholes I was using to fix bugs in FM1. I would like to take a stab at it again now that FM is more mature. – Jason Southwell Oct 17 '18 at 13:12

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 11 '12 at 02:58

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You could also consider using Chromiumembedded. Just load the svg in the embedded browser. You can then mix Delphi code with javascript, mix in html and css, etc.

This way, you can just leave it up to Chrome how to draw stuff fast (for example whether to employ gpu acceleration or not).

You'll get proper svg support, it's easy to integrate into your application, it's flexible, and there is lots of documentation and example code available online.

answered Jan 11 '12 at 02:58

Wouter van Nifterick

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Thank you for your reply. I had considered Chromiumembedded as an HTML viewer component, but would think it's rather overkill to load a simple SVG sprite. The small SVG graphic should be quickly loaded and translated into FireMonkey objects, so they are then free to be manipulated, such as transparency, rotation, scaling, color etc. And this for their individual components. Don't know if Chromiumembedded offers this in an elegant fashion? – Domus Jan 11 '12 at 12:06
If you load a svg, you can easily grab it as a bitmap; also off-screen. But yes, if you just have a couple of simple sprites, then ChromiumEmbedded is probably way overkill – Wouter van Nifterick Jan 12 '12 at 03:16

What road to take to load an SVG graphic into a FireMonkey app?

4 Answers4