Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Export of Figures

Converts 3D and 2D MATLAB plots to the scalable vector format (SVG).

Description

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Export of Figures

Converts 2D & 3D Matlab plots to the scalable vector format (SVG). This format is specified by W3C (http://www.w3.org) and can be viewed and printed with internet browsers.

Added preliminary support of filter, clipping, and tickmark extensions that go beyond the Matlab functionality. SVG filters are a great tool to create stylish plots! Try it out! Before you start using this new features have a look at the tutorial. More information and examples can be found on my blog http://www.zhinst.com/blogs/schwizer/.

Tested browsers and editors for basic SVG support (no filters, no animation):
  Opera 9.64,10.50,10.63 -> yes
  Firefox 3.5,3.6,12.0 -> yes
  Inkscape 0.46, 0.47 -> yes
  Chrome 8.0,18.0 beta -> yes
  Internet Explorer 9.0 beta -> yes
  Internet Explorer 8.0 -> no
  Internet Explorer + RENESIS -> yes

Tested browsers and editors for SVG filters:
  Opera 9.64,10.50,10.63 -> yes
  Firefox 3.5,3.6,12.0 -> yes
  Inkscape 0.46, 0.47 -> yes (some limitations)
  Chrome 8.0,18.0 beta -> yes
  Internet Explorer 8.0, 9.0 beta -> no
  Internet Explorer + RENESIS -> no

Editors for the SVG file format can be found at http://www.inkscape.org.

Usage:
> plot2svg % opens a file dialog to plot the active figure
    or
> plot2svg('myfile.svg', figure handle, pixelfiletype)
    
  pixelfiletype = 'png' (default), 'jpg'

See http://www.zhinst.com/blogs/schwizer/ to get more informations

Supported Features
- line, patch, contour, contourf, quiver, surf, ...
- markers
- image (saved as linked png pictures)
- grouping of elements
- alpha values for patches
- subplot
- colorbar
- legend
- zoom
- reverse axes
- controls are saved as png pictures
- log axis scaling
- axis scaling factors (10^x)
- labels that contain Latex commands are interpreted (with some limitations):
\alpha, \Alpha, \beta, \Beta, ... \infity, \pm, \approx
{\it.....} for italic text
{\bf.....} for bold text
^{...} for superscript
_{...} for subscript

How to use SVG files in HTML code
<object type="image/svg+xml" data="./mySVGfile.svg" width="140" height="100"></object>

Changes in Version 10-11-2010
- Support of the 'Layer' keyword to but the grid on top of
  of the other axis content using 'top' (Many thanks to Justin
  Ashmall)
- Tiny optimization of the grid display at axis borders

Changes in Version 25-08-2011
- Fix for degree character (thanks to Manes Recheis)
- Fix for problems with dash-arrays in Inkscape (thanks to
  Rüdiger Stirnberg)
- Modified shape of triangles (thanks to Rüdiger Stirnberg)

Changes in Version 22-10-2011
- Removed versn as return value of function fileparts (thanks
  to Andrew Scott)
- Fix for images (thanks to Roeland)

Changes in Version 20-05-2012
- Added some security checks for empty data
- Fixed rotation for multiline text

- Special handling of 1xn char arrays for tick labels
  (thanks to David Plavcan)
- Fix for 'Index exceeds matrix dimensions' of axis labels
  (thanks to Aslak Grinsted)
- Fix for another axis label problem (thanks to Ben Mitch)

Changes in Version 15-09-2012
- Fix for linestyle none of rectangles (thanks to Andrew)
- Enabled scatter plot functionality

Limitations:
- axis scaling factors for 3D axes
- 3D plot functionality limited (depth sorting, light)

Example of a SVG file is included to the zip file.

Reports of bugs highly welcome.

• Required Products: MATLAB
• MATLAB release: MATLAB 6.5 (R13)

[Nam Tran]

Hi,
the script works fine.
But sometime i have problem with the ylabel. It is too close the the Y-Axis, and the long label can overlap with the scale. The X-label too.
Does anyone know how to fix it ?

[loich]

Thank you for this great tool !

However I encounter a problem when I use alpha on image. For exemple with this kind of code:

>> % SVG converter version 15-Sep-2012
>> figure
>> colormap(hsv)
>> image(randi(100,10,10)),
>> alpha(double(rand(10,10)))
>> plot2svg('test.svg',gcf,'png')

In the svg file, the transparency has disapeared.

Is there a way to fix it ?
Thank you

[Shuhao Cao]

 

[Greg Hale]

Thanks Juerg. Any plans to support hgtransform? My hgtransformed' plots in matlab aren't getting moved to the right places.

[avlas]

Plot2svg is great. It would be even greater if it could automatically remove these parts of a plot that are masked (e.g. when limiting a plot in a subregion either with axis, xlim or ylim). This would create lighter svg plots and it would fix the problem of import svg files in some applications (e.g. scribus), as some of they take the whole area, including invisible parts, instead of what is the final visible figure. This makes the arrangement of different panels in a composed figure quite difficult.

I hope there is an easy way to do it. I definitely would appreciate it, and I guess other people too.

Thanks for your work!

[Dominique]

This seems awesome but I'm having a problem with legends. The legend text strays outside of the legend box. Is there an easy fix for that? Try this to see what I mean:

>> figure
>> x = linspace(-pi, pi, 300);
>> plot(x,sin(x));
>> legend('A smooth curve');
>> plot2svg('sin.svg');

Thanks!

[Joe]

I recently stumbled over this and first of all, I love this package! It is truly brilliant and I especially like the WYSIWYGness of the exported SVGs.

However, this is also what I am having troubles with. I have had absolutely no problems with using plot2svg with ordinary plots. But today, I needed to use it for loglog and semilogx/semilogy plots and it does not work properly - or at least not in my opinion. I like to use "axis square" for my plots, as I like them to be square when I use them in my reports and papers. However, this creates problems when using plot2svg, especially for semilog plots, and the exported figures are squezzed together. Using "axis square" in Matlab yields a square plot, but it can have different scalings on the axes. It appears that when exporting using plot2svg, the scalings are somehow set to be equal instead of the plot dimensions being set to be equal. I would appreciate some help or a nudge in the right direction, as it is quite urgent.

[Alan]

The code

figure
for ii=1:10
h(ii)=text(0,ii/10,'QWERTYUIOPqwertyuiop1234567890');
set(h(ii),'fontname','courier')
set(h(ii),'fontsize',(ii)+5);
end
print 'testpc.eps' -depsc
plot2svg('test.svg')

produces different results on OS X and Windows.

In both cases, the eps file contains the fonts at the right sizes, i.e. 6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15 pt

In Windows the font sizes in the svg file are 6,7,8,8,9,10,11,12,13,14 (8 is repeated and every number above 8 is off by 1 point.)

In OS X the font sizes in the svg file are
8,9,10,11,12,14,15,16,18. All way off.

[Stuart Layton]

Great function! I use it often. I have one suggestion though, the length of the change log makes calling help on the file completely useless. To prevent the change log from showing up during a call to help add a single un-commented empty line between the copyright information and the changelog.

[Shuhao Cao]

 

[Andrew]

BUGFIX & PATCH

There is a mysterious visible bounding box that shows up in the SVG file.

As an example, run:

figure;
axes
alpha=.2
color=[1 0 0]
hrect=annotation('rectangle',[0.3 0.5 .3 .2])
set(hrect,'FaceColor',color);
set(hrect,'FaceAlpha',alpha);
set(hrect,'LineStyle','none');
plot2svg('test.svg')

Note that the semi-transparent rectangle has no outline on screen, but it does in SVG.

To fix:
At the end of line 1787, immediately following the line:
scolorname=searchcolor(id,get(axchild(i),'EdgeColor'));

INSERT:
linestyle=get(axchild(i),'LineStyle');
if strcmp(linestyle,'none');
scolorname='none';
end

[Shuhao Cao]

 

[Ben Mitch]

hi Juerg - couple of other comments/questions...

(i) what does the "figuresize" argument do, it doesn't seem to be documented? exported size is controlled as described in "Plots for Scientific Publications", so what could "figuresize" be? am I not finding some documentation, perhaps?

(ii) re. "Plots for Scientific Publications", would it not be more consistent for the export size to be controlled by "PaperPosition"/"PaperUnits" rather than "Position"/"Units", since this is (as I understand it) what these "Paper..." properties are for? the way it is at the moment, the figure has to be updated on screen to affect the export size, which seems unnecessary.

great work :), cheers

[Ben Mitch]

hi Juerg. great contribution, thanks :)

"Benjamin" reported a bug in 2009 that appears to be still there. here is how to reproduce it:

figure(1)
plot(randn(100,1));
set(gca, 'ytick', 0:10);
plot2svg

--------

Index exceeds matrix dimensions.

Error in plot2svg>exponent2svg (line 2434)
ratio = numlabels(indexnz)./labelpos(indexnz);

[Philippe]

I had a problem with exporting a figure:

Subscript indices must either be real positive integers or logicals.

Error in plot2svg>axchild2svg (line 1570)
patch2svg(fid, group, axpos, x(faces_nonan), y(faces_nonan),
facecolorname, linestyle, linewidth, edgecolorname, face_opacity,
edge_opacity, closed)

After investigation, the error is caused by patches with NaN faces. Removing NaN elements from the faces array fixed the problem. Here is the modification around line 1566:

faces_nonan = faces(p,:);
faces_nonan = faces_nonan(isfinite(faces_nonan));

if flat_shading
patch2svg(fid, group, axpos, x(faces_nonan), y(faces_nonan), facecolorname, linestyle, linewidth, edgecolorname, face_opacity, edge_opacity, closed)
else
gouraud_patch2svg(fid, group, axpos, x(faces_nonan), y(faces_nonan), cdata, linestyle, linewidth, edgecolorname, face_opacity, edge_opacity, id)
end

Thank you for this great library!

[avlas]

Hi,

plot2svg is just great.

FYI, I think there is a bug when using scatter3 with different colors, as result from plot2svg appears with a single color.

Hope this can be fixed...

[Andre]

Using R212a on MacOS and I get the following error codes from the examples:

>> demo_3d_plot2svg
Matlab/Octave to SVG converter version 10-Nov-2010, Juerg Schwizer ([e-mail]).
Error using fileparts
Too many output arguments.

Error in plot2svg (line 182)
[pathstr,name,ext,versn] = fileparts(finalname);

Error in demo_3d_plot2svg (line 14)
plot2svg('sphere.svg');

[Aaron]

Juerg
Slight bug at lines 1122 and 1131. Functions are missing variable projection.

[German Gomez-Herrero]

Really nice! Thanks a lot for uploading this.

[Murat Shagirov]

 

[Oliver Woodford]

A fantastic piece of software that belies the complexity of this problem. It is the only way I know of exporting transparent vector objects from MATLAB. I often find myself recommending this function to people for that reason.

[Ichinose Kamakura]

 

[Ichinose Kamakura]

 

[chao]

Thank you
Thank you
Love it!

[Yuri Kotliarov]

Can I export IMAGESC plot without any blur? Like imagesc(rand(10))
Couldn't find a way yet.

[Richard]

Seems promising, although I have failed at the first hurdle. I receive the following error:

Error using fileparts
Too many output arguments.

Error in plot2svg (line 182)
[pathstr,name,ext,versn] = fileparts(finalname);

Error in demo_svg_water (line 76)
plot2svg('demo_svg_water.svg')

So, by typing:
plot2svg('demo_svg_water.svg')

The original graph appears but the it seems to fail when trying to use plot2svg.

[Il]

 

[Il]

Great tool! I use it to get around transparency (alpha) rendering issues for pdf. (Thx Jan Neggers for the tip on 2011b)

[Il]

 

[Kotya Karapetyan]

Have I found a bug? When trying to plot2svg a brushed plot, I receive Error in plot2svg (line 221) ... Error in plot2svg>line2svg (line 2237) if parts(1)~=1: Attempted to access parts(1); index out of bounds because numel(parts)=0. Can anyone suggest a solution on how to export just one part of a curve? I need it for showing zoom-in's.

[Steven]

Thanks for sharing this. It's an important feature that should be standard in Matlab. As it is, I want to report that the suggested UTF-8 fix in the above notes is necessary for those of us using Matlab under Mac OS 10.7. Also, while I'm able to export surfaces, the camera position is not preserved.

[Steven]

 

[arie meir]

 

[arie meir]

Great tool !
Thanks again.
A.

[Petter]

The following seems to fix the ylabel issue:

if get(ax, 'YLabel') == id
x=fontsize*1.25*1.2;
end

after x is computed in text2svg.

[Petter]

ylabels end up too close to the yticks on the axis in the SVG file. The Matlab figure is correct.

[Jan Neggers]

When using matlab2011b i get this:

Error in plot2svg (line 182)
[pathstr,name,ext,versn] = fileparts(finalname);

The solution is simple, just change line 182 to:
[pathstr,name,ext] = fileparts(finalname);

Anyway nice tool!

[Vahid Bokharaie]

I found the solution and mention it in here in case somebody else faces similar situation. The problem arose due to the fact that I uses:
axis([0 inf 0 10])
normally, Matlab interprets 'inf' in axis command as a hint to specify the upper bound of the axis itself, which is does and the plot is OK. But for some reason, plot2svg has an issue with that. Changing it to something like:
axis([0 5 0 10])
will fix the problem.

[Vahid Bokharaie]

It is very helpful, specially for somebody like me who wants to export figures to LaTex (through inkscape). I have successfully used plot2svg for a figure and it worked perfectly, however, for another figure, I got the following message:
Matlab/Octave to SVG converter version 10-Nov-2010, Juerg Schwizer ([e-mail]).
Warning: The fourth output, VERSN, of FILEPARTS will be removed in a future release.
> In fileparts at 35
In plot2svg at 182
Warning: NaN found in Y, interpolation at undefined values
will result in undefined values.
> In interp1 at 179
In plot2svg>gridLines at 709
In plot2svg>axes2svg at 975
In plot2svg at 221

and the warning goes on and on for every 'gridline' following the first. And the output is almost empty. It is a 3x2 subplot with two titles, 6 ylabels and 2 xlabels.

[Alexandre]

Great work!
However there seams to be a problem when I try to export a plot where I used the command "axis square". In the SVG, the axis are completely squeezed horizontally...

[Sébastien]

 

[Christian]

Very useful for exporting high quality figures that use the fill function. Matlab really likes converting any figure that contains fill to raster, but this function exports them easily and adobe illustrator reads the files correctly.

[Andrew Scott]

This is really good.
One tiny point, on line 182:
[pathstr,name,ext,versn] = fileparts(finalname);
Needs 'versn' removing in 2011b.

[Mr Smart]

 

[Roeland]

Great work on this excellent tool! I found a small bug though, which causes images to have two color channels flipped vertically. On line 1973 "for j = size(pointc,3)" should be changed to "for j = 1:size(pointc,3)".

[Thomas Clark]

I haven't used this really extensively, but I've just thrown a _very_ complex figure at it (coloured slice plots, multiple quivergroup objects, etc) and it handled the lot perfectly.

SO impressed, thanks Juerg!

[Jonathon]

Bug report, with a proposed fix:
Legend text "drifts" down and left in SVG's with repeated calls to plot2svg on the same plot. This also affects the plot in MATLAB when it gets redrawn (try maximize + restore on the window).

It is caused by converting the text units to 'Data' on line 2311. Converting between the 'Data' and 'normalized' units will cause the text position value to gradually change (this can be checked by comparing get(text_handle, 'Position') before and after repeated calls to set(text_handle, 'Units', 'data') and set(text_handle, 'Units', 'normalized')).

Proposed fix: keep track of the original position in addition to the original units:
@@ -2305,6 +2305,7 @@
function text2svg(fid,group,axpos,paperpos,id,ax,projection)
global PLOT2SVG_globals;
originalTextUnits=get(id,'Units');
+originalTextPosition = get(id, 'Position');
if PLOT2SVG_globals.octave
set(id,'Units','data');
else
@@ -2363,6 +2364,7 @@
label2svg(fid,group,axpos,id,x,y,'',textalign,textrot,textvalign,lines,paperpos,font_color,0)
end
set(id,'Units',originalTextUnits);
+set(id,'Position', originalTextPosition);

[Nik F]

Not /perfect/, but pretty amazing for what it does!

[Kotya Karapetyan]

BUG REPORT:
Plot setting command

xlabel('Wavelength, nm', 'FontUnits', 'normalized', 'FontSize', 0.03);

causes plot2svg to crush with

??? Error using ==> plot2svg>convertunit at 2804
Unknown unit normalized.

[Jacob]

Bug report:
When there are more than one line in the x or y label they will be written on top of each other. It creates the two lines as different text objects so the error can be corrected through inkscape.

The plot looks fine in matlab using this command:
xlabel({'this is line one', 'and line 2'})

[Tommy Sebastian]

Highly useful code! One small problem, however... for 3d plots, colors do not seem to come up correctly. Using RGB to define a green surface [0 1 0] results in a green surface in the figure, but a blue surface for the svg image... similar problems for other colors as well. Suggestions?

[Frederic Roux]

same problem as Yohai. pcolor plot has white mesh/grid overlaid on top. how can i get rid of it?

[Tsz Ho Yu]

An excellent solution for generating transparent patches in Matlab!

Yet, I found that the legend are not rendered in my SVG files. Once I guess it is because the legends are plotted outside the axes, but there is no legend rendered in my plots even I put them back inside the plots...

[Matthias Pospiech]

I found that your code works well and provides results that match very well the wanted linestyles and fonts specified. However the plot is cropped at the upper boundary which should not happen.
I have posted an example of this here:
http://www.matthiaspospiech.de/blog/2010/10/11/matlab-figures-solving-export-problems/3/#toc-plot2svg

It would be great if this could be improved.

[Carlos]

This does sound like a great tool, but on matlab R2009a in linux, the example demos (tutorial and svg_water) do not run successfully. They both fail to embed the background figures.

[Benjamin]

Small bug report.
My plots have an axis label coded by:
ylabel('Oscillator Strength (eV^{-1})')
but the svg file is missing the final ')'.

This is a great piece of code, well done!
Thanks,
Ben

[Juerg Schwizer]

Dear Catarina,

Many thanks for your feedback. Unfortunately, plot2svg has at the moment no support for depth sorting of graphics objects. Only depth sorting of surfaces is supported. To support an universal dept-sorting I have to design a z-buffer algorithm from scratch or use a c++/java library. Or I would need access to the Matlab internals. At the moment, my plot2svg has to generate the svg elements just from the user data. Also the svg element saving has to be changed as I need some further buffering and sorting before writing the svg file. Thus, it would be a major change.
For your application, you have to split the line into two parts and sort the elements according their z-position in the view space. There are some code fragments in the plot2svg code that do the same thing for surfaces.
I'm sorry that I can give you no better advice at the moment. Let's hope that the Matlab graphics engine itself gets some upgrading with improved support of all the new technologies like svg, filters, animation, ...
Juerg

[Catarina Avelino]

I found this tool great except for one thing that for me is not working. If we consider the code:

function exp
set(gcf,'Color',[0.95,0.95,0.95])
[X,Y,Z] = sphere(30);
mesh(X,Y,Z,'facecolor',[0.7 0.7 0.7],'edgecolor','none'); hold on;
alpha(.7);
A = [0,0,1]';
B = [1,0,0]';
v3 = cross(cross(A,B),A);
t = linspace(0,atan2(norm(cross(A,B)),dot(A,B)));
v = A*cos(t)+v3*sin(t);
plot3(v(1,:),v(2,:),v(3,:),'LineWidth',0.2,'Color',[0.3,0.3,0.3])
view([80, -40])
axis equal, hidden off,
hold off
axis off
plot2svg('exp.svg')
end

we see a sphere with a line drawn where one part lies in front of the sphere and another part lies behind the sphere (the figure has transparency). In the matlab figure there is disctintion of those two different parts on the line colors. In the svg file we saw that there is no distinction of colors, i.e., the color of the line is the same whatever the line is ahead or behind the sphere.

There is a way to create the svg file with different colors for the objects created in front and behind the sphere? Or to make the lines behind dotted?

I would appreciate your help!
Catarina

[Eric Tittley]

 

[Yohai]

Works great for simple plots.
However, it doesn't work for pcolor. It creates a big file (11M) which doesn't look like the figure I've created.
Can it be a Linux-compatability problem?

[Jonathon Harding]

This is working excellently for me! I can finally output graphs in vector format with fonts other than Helvetica.

One minor bug report: (La)TeX strings that end with a single character after the last curly brace will drop that character (e.g. a_{sub}b would only display a_{sub}).

This can be fixed by changing line 2613 to:
if lastValidCharacter <= length(StringText)
The important part is the less than or equals, rather than a strict less than.

[Brock]

By far one of the most useful pieces of code I've come across. I used to trace Bezier curves on top of .png images *by hand* in a vector graphics editor to get .svg images for papers and posters. I can't even begin to describe how much time/frustration this will save me! Thanks so much!

[Ryan]

Thank you! I was constantly adjusting figures in Inkscape that did not copy properly from Matlab. Problem soved!

[Patrick Mineault]

Bug report:

I ran into trouble when attempting to use ImageMagick's convert command line program with an svg generated by plot2svg (e.g convert myplot.svg myplot.png). The aspect ratio of the output was way off. However when I loaded the same file in Illustrator it came out fine. Comparing Illustrator and plot2svg output, I found the following solution:

Replace line 176 with:

fprintf(fid,'<svg preserveAspectRatio="xMinYMin meet" width="%0.3fpx" height="%0.3fpx" viewBox="0 0 %0.3f %0.3f" ',paperpos(3),paperpos(4),paperpos(3),paperpos(4));

As an added bonus, I now get correct crop marks when I load the file in Illustrator.

[Patrick Mineault]

It didn't work immediately with a figure with a /patch/ (the outlines were correct but the colors didn't show up). Got it to work by switching to the /fill/ command instead. The output is exceedingly accurate compared with the eps exporters based on the painters renderer which tries to simplify/merge outlines and messes up a lot of small details. Excellent work!

[Patrick Mineault]

 

[Rahul]

 

[Gladnon Galoshev]

 

[Juerg Schwizer]

% Example how to adjust your figure properties for
% publication needs (answer to Aslak Grinsted's question)
s = figure;
% Select the default font and font size
% Note: Matlab does internally round the font size
% to decimal pt values
set(s, 'DefaultTextFontSize', 10); % [pt]
set(s, 'DefaultAxesFontSize', 10); % [pt]
set(s, 'DefaultAxesFontName', 'Times New Roman');
set(s, 'DefaultTextFontName', 'Times New Roman');
% Select the preferred unit like inches, centimeters,
% or pixels
set(s, 'Units', 'centimeters');
pos = get(s, 'Position');
pos(3) = 8; % Select the width of the figure in [cm]
pos(4) = 6; % Select the height of the figure in [cm]
set(s, 'Position', pos);
set(s, 'PaperType', 'a4letter');
% From SVG 1.1. Specification:
% "1pt" equals "1.25px"
% "1pc" equals "15px"
% "1mm" would be "3.543307px"
% "1cm" equals "35.43307px"
% "1in" equals "90px"

[Juergen]

Really great! Thanks a lot!

just one small problem with log scaled axes. To reproduce:
figure; plot(0:5, 0:5);
set(gca, 'xLim', [0 5]);
set(gca, 'xScale', 'log');
plot2svg

Solution: always set lower xLim > 0, if you use log scaled axes.
(I know: quite obvious! :-) ...but this case could simply come true)

I guess this exception could be trapped in function get_projection (around line 1913): if xi(1) == Inf ...

[Juerg Schwizer]

Hi Felix, many thanks for the feedback! Bug 1 is already implemented together with additional tex elements. These changes will soon be published together with a minor label bugfix. I was not able to reproduce bug 2 & 3. Could you please send me an example. Many thanks. Juerg.

[Felix Zoergiebel]

Yet another bug when plotting the y-axis on the right side of the plot-box: label positions are inverted, i.e. labels are not [1 2 3 4 5] but [5 4 3 2 1] (data is still plotted as in figure)

[Felix Zoergiebel]

Great job! This really helps me plotting translucent patches, which is just not possible with matlab functions. However, there are small problems.
1: latex \cdot is not processed. I added
tex=strrep(tex,'\cdot','& # 8901;'); (without spaces...)
to line 2351 of plot2svg_beta.m
2: I have an hggroup with text objects that are placed outside of the axis (custom labels). These labels are not plotted before I set the parent of each of them to the axis.

[Zboud]

Great, too bad LaTeX-interpreted text() results are not interpreted...and {} don't help, I get $v$ or {$v$} in the SVG file ... :'(

[Aslak Grinsted]

I would like to use plot2svg for producing figures for publications. (I am often having problems with matlabs print when there is anything transparent in the plot.)

That means i would like to use absolute units for the size. I would also like to specify the font size, linewidth in units of points. Many journals have strict requirements on these.

[Rob Campbell]

I love it! I see I shall be using this a lot.
Seems to work very well in Firefox (all I've tried so far).
Am about to use it for generating HTML reports of analyses.

[me]

great!
without this presenting results would suck!

btw.
in order to ensure utf 8 encoding, change two lines in plot2svg.m
:
142: fid=fopen(finalname,'wt', 'n', 'UTF-8'); % Create a new text file
143: fprintf(fid,'<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?><!DOCTYPE svg PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD SVG 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/1.1/DTD/svg11.dtd">\n'); % Insert file header

[Eddie Seven]

yay, it works. I wrap a rsvg-convert after it to get a png file. even for simple plots, it's scandalous how bad the matlab internal plot saving utilities are.

[Kristin B.]

 

[T]

 

[Juerg Schwizer]

Hi Cesar Roda Neve,
This is not a bug in plot2svg. It's a limitation of Inkscape and Firefox. Other browsers like Opera or Chrome can handle it. The SVG code for sub and super script is conform to the SVG 1.1 specification. I'm aware of the limitation and will try to find a workaround for Inkscape and Firefox.

[Cesar Roda Neve]

I have found a bug. When i write in the axis label a text including super or sub script, just something like:

Text_{Material}

It just ignore the super or sub thing and write it together...

TextMaterial

It should be nice if someone has an idea of how to fix this.

[Vincent]

very usefull tool
It would be nice if someone could compile the bug fixes listed above and release a updated version... (probl. Juerg is already working on that...?)

[Benjamin]

Bug report:
If I set ytick manually, but then also set ylim so that not all yticks are displayed, then I get an "Index exceeds matrix dimensions" error.

Fix:
line 1019 of plot2svg_2d:

indexnz=find(labelpos ~= 0)

should be changed to:

labellimit=get(ax,'YLim')
indexnz=find(labelpos ~= 0 & labelpos >= labellimit(1) & labelpos <= labellimit(2))

and obviously, line 1003 should be changed similarly for the x-axis case.

[Ritesh Sood]

found a little bug on line 823 of plot2svg_2d.m which was causing firefox to hit a parsing error. The original line code is
case '-.',pattern = 'stroke-dasharray="100pt,25pt,25pt,25pt,"';
which should be changed to
case '-.',pattern = 'stroke-dasharray="100pt,25pt,25pt,25pt"';
(The bug is the trailing `," after the last 25pt.)
---------------------------------------------------
There are a few issues that I'm seeing in the exported svg:
1) subscripted labels like "f(t_1,t_2)" are appearing verbatim; subscripts are not getting interpreted as I believe they should.
2) I have a figure with two 2D contour plots differentiated by one set of contours being solid and the other set dot-dashed. The svg output is unfortunately quite poor: one can hardly make out that there are two sets of contours.
----------------
For (1) above I have an idea: SVG+MathML
I am using MathML to render a table of parameters -- which requires some math typesetting, greek symbols, matrices -- to go along with the plots. The way I am doing that is to have tex (well, itex actually) markup in the file and pass the file through itex2MML.
Maybe the same process will work with the svg figures. Enclose the math in the labels in a pair of
`$"s (requited by itex), set Matlab's Interpreter to Latex so that the fig file comes out alright, create an svg and filter through itex2MML. Let's see how that goes.
If only Matlab had native SVG support, wouldn't have to jum through all these hoops...

[Georg Stillfried]

The advice by Sebastien Besson did the trick. Thanks!

[Florian]

 

[Mike Schachter]

Sorry, kind of screwed up there - what I was trying to do was plot a handle that comes from a call to the polar(...) command. plot2svg works fine for figure handles. I retract my fix, but not the whole dying-without-plot2svg thing.

[Mike Schachter]

By the way, this is the most awesome and necessary script I've ever used. When it stopped working I wanted to die and thought the world around me was crumbling to pieces, leaving me shattered and vulnerable to the cruel biddings of Adobe Illustrator.

But now those days are over, I can breathe a breath of joy knowing that I can continue to use Inkscape for making figures! Hurrah!

[Mike Schachter]

Just to be specific, you can paste that code at line 40 of plot2svg_2d.m.

[Mike Schachter]

plot2svg doesn't work for higher MATLAB versions (such as 7.6), but here is a fix. Put this near the top of plot2svg_2d in order to make things work:

if (str2num(matversion(1)) >= 7)
disp(' Using grandparent id due to higher matlab version.');
id = get( get(id, 'Parent'), 'Parent');
end

[Sebastien Besson]

Hi Georg,

I experienced the same problem and solved it by replacing lines 1121 and 1130 :
group=axchild2svg(fid,id,axIdString,ax,group,paperpos,get(axchild(i), 'Children'),axpos,groupax);
by
group=axchild2svg(fid,id,axIdString,ax,group,paperpos,get(axchild(i), 'Children'),axpos,groupax,projection);

Hope it will help you.

[Georg Stillfried]

unfortunately I recieve an error when I try to export patch and surface objects (Matlab 7 on Linux)

>> plot2svg('figure.svg')
Matlab to SVG converter version 22-Jan-2006, Juerg Schwizer ([e-mail]).
??? Input argument "projection" is undefined.

Error in ==> plot2svg>axchild2svg at 902
[x,y,z] = project(points(1,:),points(2,:),points(3,:),projection);

902 [x,y,z] = project(points(1,:),points(2,:),points(3,:),projection);

[Georg Stillfried]

very nice, works well

[george melinkus]

How long will it take The Mathworks to include this functionality in Matlab by default?! It has been asked multiple times and would be a BIG plus considering the growing support for the format, both closed and open source.

Just wondering... big thumbs up for the author of this export script!

[Mazen Saied]

Hello,

Great work and congratulations for this macro. I have found a bug to correct. It concerns surface intersections when you plot 2 or more surfaces (surf, mesh, ...). I notices that when you export in SVG format, plotted surfaces are stacked one on the other and their intersections disappear.

Nevertheless, all the rest is perfect.
Thank you

[sylvain lalure]

 

[Dmitry Babin]

A correction to my previous post (from 2008-05-15):

1. LaTeX commands ARE interpreted, but only when enclosed by curly braces. For example:
xlabel('\bft\rm, [sec]')
isn't interpreted correctly;
xlabel('{\bft}, [sec]')
is OK.

2. About "surf" and "mesh" plots: my mistake... I tried to use it in this way:
h = surf(.........)
plot2svg('filename.svg',h)
The correct way to get a handle is:
h = figure(1)
surf(.........)
plot2svg('filename.svg',h)

[Mat Hunt]

Interoperability with octave would also be a good idea, I get the error message (with octave):
Matlab to SVG converter version 22-Jan-2006, Juerg Schwizer (converter@juergs
chwizer.de).
Warning: Future versions may no more support older versions than MATLAB R12.
error: `uiputfile' undefined near line 52 column 29
error: evaluating if command near line 51, column 1
error: called from `plot2svg' in file `/home/mat/plot2svg.m'

[Dmitry Babin]

Bug report (MATLAB R2008a, not tested with older versions):
1. LaTeX commands are not interpreted (e.g. \bf appears in SVG text strings)
2. When trying to use it with surf plots, the following error message appears:

??? Error using ==> get
There is no 'Units' property in the 'surfaceplot' class.

Error in ==> plot2svg at 87
originalFigureUnits=get(id,'Units');

[nino guttuso]

 

[Jason Merrill]

This is fantastic. I think this may allow me to dump Illustrator in favor of Inkscape. One cross-platform thing: on Unix/Mac, files always get saved with an extra backslash in front of them. A quick fix is to replace the explicit string '/' with filesep in the addBackSlash subfunction (lines 1652-1653 in plot2svg, and lines 1232-1233 in plot2svg_2d). Here's the corrected version:

function strString=addBackSlash( strSlash)
% adds a backslash at the last position of the string (if not already there)
if ( strSlash(end) ~= filesep)
strString = [ strSlash filesep];
else
strString = strSlash;
end

I suspect this could all be cleaned up (i.e. you wouldn't even need the addBackSlash function) using the fullfile function.

[r. h.]

Bug report. Used without arguments.

??? Attempted to access cdata(2,:); index out of bounds because size(cdata)=[1,21].

Error in ==> plot2svg>gouraud_patch2svg at 1208
face_color2 = cdata(j-1,:);

Error in ==> plot2svg>axchild2svg at 861
gouraud_patch2svg(fid, group, axpos, x(faces(p,:)), y(faces(p,:)),
cdata, linestyle, linewidth, edgecolorname, face_opacity,
edge_opacity,id)

Error in ==> plot2svg>axes2svg at 459
group =
axchild2svg(fid,id,axIdString,ax,group,paperpos,axchild,axpos,groupax,projection);

Error in ==> plot2svg at 139
group=axes2svg(fid,id,ax(j),group,paperpos);

[Kaushik Ghose]

This is a great script! Thank you for making it.
I use inkscape to edit the svg files and I find the following issues:

1. I need to hand code the font into the file (i.e. I need to force
textfontname = 'Arial';
)

2. I need to remove the "pt" from all the font size descriptions

Thanks
-Kaushik

[Sam R]

This is excellent. Matlab allows you to save figures in illustrator's format, but it does not handle transparency of 3D planes. This script does and makes it possible to have a vectorial file of 3D surfaces with transparency. Thanks!

[Geoff Adams]

Very nice function. However, I believe I have found a bug. On line 1121, "axchild2svg" is called without the "projection" argument. Adding it in seems to fix the problem. So to fix the bug:

--At line 1121, replace:
group=axchild2svg(fid,id,axIdString,ax,group,paperpos,get(axchild(i), 'Children'),axpos,groupax);
--with:
group=axchild2svg(fid,id,axIdString,ax,group,paperpos,get(axchild(i), 'Children'),axpos,groupax,projection);
--Done.

[Jarek Tuszynski]

Great tool.

[Frouke H]

I got the following error message:
"??? Attempted to access xg_label_end(5); index out of bounds because numel(xg_label_end)=4.

Error in ==> plot2svg>axes2svg at 545
label2svg(fid,grouplabel,axpos,ax,xg_label_end(i),yg_label_end(i),convertString(axlabelx(i,:)),'Center',0,'top',1,paperpos,scolorname,exponent);

Error in ==> plot2svg at 139
group=axes2svg(fid,id,ax(j),group,paperpos);"

What do I do wrong?

[jhgjh ouyou]

 

[Stijn Klaassen]

Great tool for exporting graphs to Inkscape!
Get an error when making a plot using errorbar:
"??? Input argument "projection" is undefined.Error in ==> plot2svg>axchild2svg at 706 [x,y,z] = project(linex,liney,linez,projection);
Error in ==> plot2svg>axchild2svg at 1121 group=axchild2svg(fid,id,axIdString,ax,group,paperpos,get(axchild(i), 'Children'),axpos,groupax);
Error in ==> plot2svg>axes2svg at 459
group = axchild2svg(fid,id,axIdString,ax,group,paperpos,axchild,axpos,groupax,projection);
Error in ==> plot2svg at 139 group=axes2svg(fid,id,ax(j),group,paperpos);"

Anybody an idea for a workaround?

[bassam atallah]

Great little application. It is helpful. A few comments.
Doesn't seem to deal correctly with:
1) When background axis 'Color' is set to 'none' (you get a none white background)
2) Doesn't support histogram plots in the form of 'bar' or 'stairs'

[PONTHEP VENGSUNGNLE]

Great job,It is very interesting
Thank for good experience
From thailand

[bahram houchmandzadeh]

Great work. For must stuff we do, matlab plots are not that sophisticated and the package just works.

[Jean-Francois Dupuis]

To handle bar plot, just use the backward compatibility flag such as : bar('v6', ...);

[J. V.]

Hi

I don't see why doesn't Matlab have an "export to SVG" option yet. Juerg Schwizer did a great job, but it is too much for a single person to implement the full support for SVG.

It works ok for simple graphics. But it fails with transparencies and flat FaceColor. Take the example in the documentation for the "patch" command

vert = [0 1 1;0 2 1;1 2 1;1 1 1];
fac = [1 2 3;1 3 4];
tcolor = [1 1 1;.7 .7 .7];
patch('Faces',fac,'Vertices',vert,'FaceVertexCData',tcolor,'FaceColor','flat')

plot2svg 'matlab_patch_example.svg'

[bass atallah]

Works well for the most part. Gives an error and doesn't converst bar graphs though.

[phox hat]

Just what I needed!

[Benjamin Watts]

Excellent function, I will use this alot!

Bug: setting XTick with any numbers outside of the set xlim in the figure will cause an error in plot2svg.

[S. Barth]

Great! Spent too much time to find something comparable.

[Monsieur Truc]

Thanks, this is great and should be implemented natively in Matlab.
Tip : if you want smaller files, convert the multilines objects (curves...) into pathes with inkscape and use the 'simplify' tool.

[Timothy Withheld]

this piece of code is amazing. the svg exports work perfect with inkscape which is _exactly_ what i needed.

[Kris De Gussem]

Should be part of Matlab itself

[m m]

Get confused if you manually alter the axis scales: e.g. Inkscape still reports layers of the 'original' size I think. Also non-size preserving in pixels at the least. Needs specifically size setting in e.g. Inkscape before external users will recognise the pixel size settings. Otherwise, very goodl

[Yordan Kyosev]

Thank you Juerg!

[E Dinnat]

Just tried the 3D functionality on a few samples. Works great. Excellent and very usefull function. Too bad light is not exported and interpolated shading is not excellent, but I guess that SVG (or any vector format) isn't suited for so complex rendering.

[Ken Senior]

Running the plot2svg command on my Windows XP R14SP3 gives the error:
??? Error: File: plot2svg.m Line: 1763 Column: 1
The function "get_projection" was closed
with an 'end', but at least one other function definition was not.
To avoid confusion when using nested functions,
it is illegal to use both conventions in the same file.

[Wladimir van der Laan]

You just saved my day :-) I tried so many things, like exporting .ai and trying to import it in inkscape, but it all yielded corrupted plots or nothing at all. With this program, it works perfectly.

[Matthias Schabel]

Very nice work. Default plot size appears quite small when imported into Illustrator - 400% magnification required to make image fit standard page. Otherwise great help for preparing plots for publication.

[Charlie Eckelston]

Great tool for editing plots for publications

[tom mod]

 

[Heiko Marx]

Nice! What I first found was that for zoomed plots the data exceeds the plot area. And the files become quite large. And having lots of controls causes having lots of jpegs. But because we use the .svg-format very often, this is a very useful tool with a lot of potential! Thank you!