Develop Reference

Retrieve paths already on HTML canvas

I am working on a little tool to measure architectural drawings from PDF files. The PDF is rendered by Mozilla pdf.js on to a canvas. Once rendered, I would like to get coordinates all the paths/lines/rects on the canvas. This is to make the tool snap to the endpoints of lines when the mouse cursor is nearby. There don't seem to be an API for retrieving that. As it is not my code that actually renders onto the canvas, I dont path information beforehand.
What I have so far tried is, modify the pdf.js to emit the endpoints' x,y based on moveTo and lineTo, save them in an array. Using this array I can snap correctly in simple drawings. For complex drawings, there seems to be lot of transformations applied and this simple procedure doesnt work.
Any ideas on how to go about it?

Layering The Canvas Without Multiple Canvases

There I am creating a stamp maker in HTML,Jquery and javascript. In the editor of my application image is adding to HTML canvas (simple) and also the text, I just create new line element and then append it to the canvas.But the problem is that I want my image to be in back of text. I googled it alot and also search stackoverflow I got the solution of creating multiple canvases but in last I have to download the canvas to file for user. There is the problem. And I want to export whole canvas along with text one and second image together.If I create seperate canvas for the text and another for image and give image one low zindex it would be fine but there will be one canvas to be exported as image.
Link to multiple layers in canvas html5 - canvas element - Multiple layers
I am hopping that we would come up with an idea of how to download both canvases as an image or find a method to take image to back of the canvas.
Any answer would be appreciated.

If you store the text, second image and first image in variables, you could just draw them on the canvas in the order you prefer. This means that, whenever there's some change in the image or text, you should clean the canvas and redraw everything.
Also, you may be interested in Compositing, since it allows you to decide where a new object is drawn in relation to the existing drawing (on top, behind, etc.)

clip-path in Raphaël.js

How can I use clip-path with Raphaël.js like this example. It seams that Raphael.js has only clip-rect in it.

You can cut a hole through a path drawn shape.
This is a technique known as donut holes and you can see an example on my index page
If this looks difficult it is not
See the information database and the technique labelled donut holes
My site index is
http://www.irunmywebsite.com/
Err it used to be.
Now you can find a multiple clip path (Imagine seeing a view through several holes}
The carousel and the thumbnail holder are just one path...
See the Raphael Crousel
A much better example I include below. The central blue region has several holes cut into it. This has multi purpose usage.
It is part of what I call a DOM / SVG hybrid solution.
Cut multi purpose holes for a variety of reasons

I don't think you can do it via Raphael. You can do it by manipulating the DOM directly, but you will loose the ability to call Raphael methods for that element.
I find Raphael a bit obsolete, now that IE supports SVG. You can do much more with plain javascript and and the SVG specification.

If, like in the example image, it's a raster image (png, gif, jpg... bitmap pixel images) you are trying to clip, it's actually really easy. In Raphael 2, you just set the fill to point at the image file. It uses it as a background image.
If you want to crop an image or photograph with a Raphael path or shape like a clipping mask or clip-path for image files, just set the image as the path's fill.
somepath.attr({fill: 'someimage.png'});
Limitations (AFAIK):
Only one image per path
Only one path per image (use compound paths for complex masks)
Things like background position aren't easy - see this question for more
I think it's impossible to stop the image repeating

Combine Vector advantages with Bitmap in an HTML canvas element - how?

What I am trying to do is create a game that has an extreme amount of zoom-ability on a canvas element. I would like to make use of the advantage that vector graphics have insofar as being able to be programmatically created at runtime, with the high performance of bitmap images.
What I would like to do is programmatically create the first-frame image of a game "sprite"... this would be a vector image. After the first frame though, I do not want to keep wasting CPU cycles on drawing the image though.. i would like to cache it as a bitmap/high performance image for that zoom level.
Following this, if the user zooms in by >20%, I then redraw the image with a higher level of detail vector image. As above, this vector image would then be cached and optimized.
As you can see here, this would be a pretty basic space ship.. I would first render it programmatically as a vector and then.. raster it I guess? Goal is to avoid wasting CPU.
If the user zooms in...
A new vector image of the same shape would be drawn, albeit with a much higher level of detail. This is basically a Level Of Detail system. In this case as well, after the initial programmatic draw, I would "raster" the image for maximum performance.
Does anyone have ideas on what tools I would need to make this a reality inside of a HTML canvas? (The rest of the game will be running inside of the canvas element..)
Thank you very much for your thoughts.
**Edit: I wanted to add... perhaps the route of rendering an image via SVG (programmatically), then pushing that png file into the canvas using drawimage(), might provide some success? Something similar? Hmm...

Check out that article , but it seems there is no standard method to do what you want and it may fail in IE.
http://svgopen.org/2010/papers/62-From_SVG_to_Canvas_and_Back/#svg_to_canvas
You should perhaps go with an all SVG game , or provide a maximum zooming rate to your game and use big images as sprite assets. it would not have been a problem using flash,but i guess you wont go with flash anyway.
Maybe there is a framework that can translate SVG into a "canvas drawing sequence" but i would not bet on high performances in that case.

I managed to answer my own question.
The way to do this is to first create an SVG file, and then convert it to a PNG file on the client using "canvg". The PNG can be created at different levels of details based on what you want, and in this way you could create a dynamic LOD system.
Flash does something similar automatically by cashing a bitmap image of the SVG file... it's called "pre-rendering". If the SVG isn't scaled or the alpha isn't changed, flash will just use the bitmap instead (much faster then continuously re-rendering the SVG file, in complex cases). Size (and thus detail) of the PNG output can be modified however you like, and so pre-rendering could be done based on events as well.
From this information, I have decided to implement the LOD system such that SVG is used whilst the user is actively zooming (scaling the target "sprite"), and then as the zoom slows down, compute a PNG pre-render. Also, at extremely high levels of zoom, I simply use the SVG, as it is much easier for the CPU to compute SVG's at high resolution, then bitmap images that cover most of the screen. (just take a look at some of the HTML5 icon tests that put lots of icons on the screen... the bigger the icons are, the slower it runs).
Thanks very much to everyone's comments here and I hope that my question/answer has helped someone.

How to add and remove (multiple) image from canvas.?

I am new to canvas (HTML5) i have to design a paint application on canvas. There is a feature like dynamic addition of the selected image at canvas (on mouse-movements) and functionality to delete and drag that added image (Same for Text addition). Now my Question is how can we delete the images from the canvas (Note :There are no fixed no. of images added to the canvas.) Can you please suggest me the approach ??

An HTML5 Canvas is much like a real-world canvas. When you draw to the canvas the ink changes the canvas, blending with the other contents already there and forever changing them.
Ask Monet "How do you add a new person to your painting?" and he might say "you just paint them where you want them!" Similarly, you use drawImage() to 'paint' an image to your Canvas.
However, if you ask Monet "How do you remove a person from a painting?" and he would likely look at you funny and then respond "Quoi? You would have to either make a new painting, or else paint over top of the person!" Similarly, if you want to "remove" something from your canvas you either have to start over (clear the canvas and draw everything except that thing) or re-paint what was 'behind' your image on top of it.
Here is an example I made that shows one way that you can 'save' part of a canvas (by drawing it to another canvas) and then later drawing it back over something to 'erase' it.
However, I generally advise you not to use an HTML5 Canvas unless you know why you need it. You mention adding and removing items, and also detecting mouse movements. Using a retained-mode drawing system—like HTML or SVG—means that you actually add or remove or change items in an object representation, and it is up to someone else (the browser) to figure out how to best redraw them.
You may be best served by letting the "paint" portions of the user input be done on one or more canvases, and then compositing these canvases with other items (such as <div>s with text, or <img> for pictures, or vector-based SVG artwork).
You can make your own retained-mode system on type of canvas, or you can use someone else's library that does this. But instead I'd suggest that you consider whether this is the best and easiest way to accomplish your goals.