Fate of Io: Vector graphics

Vector graphics

2004/01/21 06:59:39 PST by Davy boy2000b [0/13]

I'm not sure about this type of image production.

I want to learn some more about it and possibly go into it in detail.

Do you know any freeware vector editors? (not converters)

Do you know the most recommended vector graphic editor other than Adobe Illustrator?

Is it Maths INTENSIVE? Like intensive as in you have to be REALLY good with mathes before even attempting this kinda stuff?

Anybody here other than jcore that can do these types of image creation?

Is this a dieing or a growing way of image creation?

Do vector graphics load without hitch in browsers e.g. IE6 and above?

Do they load one line at a time, like I've seen on some other page a while ago...?

What are the image file comparisons against gifs, jpegs and pngs?

Do any fo you guys recommend I look futher into vector graphics or just forget it?

Any other comments?

The Internet isn't as easy to navigate as you guys can tell >_< I can't find much stuff from Google any more. So many cheap link-farms (grr!)

2004/01/21 08:22:13 PST by Temporal [manager]

The most popular vector-graphics format is probably PDF. Yep, that's right: PDF is based on vector graphics. That's how it allows you to zoom in on text and some images without them getting pixelated. Another neat thing about PDF is that any program that can print to a printer can be used to produce a PDF. All you need is a printer driver that prints to a PDF file rather than an actual printer. This isn't something I can help you find, though.

PDF isn't ideally suited to every situation, of course. You are probably looking for something more like SVG. The SVG format is XML-based (ick) and an open standard (yay). I believe there are open source editors available, and I know that there are free viewers which plug into browsers just as easily as Acrobat Reader does. I don't know the details, though.

Vector graphics are definately on the rise. The entire Mac OSX interface is based on them. They have not been popular in the past because it takes a lot of processing power to render a vector image with as much detail as a typical raster image, but in these days of excessively fast CPUs it isn't much of a problem anymore. (Vector graphics were also used decades ago, before raster graphics, but that was only because they take less memory, and they were only used for very simple images.)