I have read through quite a few past answers to this comparison question. But did not find a satisfying answer to my particular situation.
I want to make a note taking application using either SVG or Canvas. But find it hard to decide between SVG or Canvas.
The note taking app should be simple (only drawing/writing + erasing) capability.
I guess both SVG and canvas can work. But is it true that Canvas is going to be easier to program than SVG for this particular task?
THanks
Canvas will be easier since you mention erasing. Because canvas is bitmap graphics, to erase something you simply clear the specific pixels you want to get rid of.
To do the same in SVG, you would need to either clear entire shapes or determine how to modify the shapes to erase only parts of them - or add new shapes on top using white or whatever is the background color.
This article has a good overview of the differences and why you might choose one over the other: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/04/22/thoughts-on-when-to-use-canvas-and-svg.aspx
basically canvas is pixel based whereas SVG is object based.
If you need to know which shape you clicked on afterwards it's easier in SVG.
If you just want to draw stuff as fast as possible then canvas may be your best bet.
I do not know what really is "note taking app" but take a look at this svg edit
Related
I'm trying to make a simple game (view from above) on canvas. Please tell me, which is faster:
1) Draw everything on one <canvas> and calculate the areas that need to be redrawn.
2) Draw certain parts of the scene on different <canvas> elements and update each only if necessary. In the it variant, probably, I can also use a partial redraw.
For example, I could draw a map on one element, enemies on the second, and a cursor and etc on the third. When moving enemies, I could only redraw the second canvas.
Please explain in as much detail as possible which option is better and why. And could you please advise books that can deepen my knowledge on this issue? For beginners.
Most canvas games will use a sort of layering that you are describing. The furthest forward layer would be the HUD, either by a seperate canvas or HTML elements and this would only change if something happened to it, such as someone upgrading their player. Then after that it depends on how they draw the canvas. The simplest way would be to simply draw the portions of the map and obstacles are on the screen.
Use one canvas, trust me. If you have a sprite that does nothing but sit there it is still getting drawn 60 times a second so it makes no difference if it is moving or not changing or not if it exists on screen it is getting drawn regardless of change.
I am looking to achieve something like this. A HTML view has a finite number of images (shown as red boxes in the image below). Are there any browser/jQuery APIs available today (cross-browser) which will let me calculate the dimensions of the remaining space (shown in green boxes) quickly? In the example shown below, it is easy to calculate the green area dimensions using simple geometry given the dimensions of the red boxes. But I am talking about very complex scenarios and complicated combination of images.
Appreciate any help. Thanks.
If you every images have absolute property, you can calculate dimension through top and left properties like $('#elementID').offset().top and $('#elementID').offset().left
From my experience working with DOM element dimensions, you cannot rely on them for exact values, and certainly can't really on them for the same values cross-browser. You can get OK results, but if you have complex scenarios then you will probably come undone at some point.
One way I have achieved similar things in the past is by drawing images to HTML5 Canvas. Using canvas you can have very fine-grained control. I have even iterated canvases pixel-by-pixel to get pixel perfect measurements of items on the canvas.
Check out this tutorial for a brief overview of drawing an image.
UPDATE
There is no easy way to do it. Using this method is low-level and will require you to use mathematics, and possibly byte-level image data from the canvas. However, if your problem is as complex as you suggest then you will have to get stuck in. When I did something similar I was also looking for an easy way to achieve what I wanted in the browser, then spent a month getting to grips with the canvas API, learning about byte-level colour data etc, but in then end I got what I needed, and ended up with something quite unique as it was difficult to achieve in a browser.
To get started, first I would say look at implementing a layered canvas by absolutely positioning multiple canvases on top of each other, then drawing a single image on each one. You already know the sizes of the images, and you can decide the coordinates of where to draw the image, so that's a start. In fact that may be all you need, you can track each image as you draw them by storing coords and dimensions, and you should be able to build up an accurate picture in numbers of where all your images are in 2D space.
Using those numbers you should then be able to calculate any empty spaces on there. However, that is a beyond me and probably a question for Mathematics Stack Exchange (which is actually down at the moment :D).
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.
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.
Is there any change to remove or resize selected object from Canvas without changing other design.
For example:- I drawn circles (just for help Circle1, circle2, circle3) .
circle1 will be bottom of other two circles. Now I want to remove circle2 or re-size. But it should not effect other circles.
And it there any change do this without using clear Canavas method.
It should work something like powerpoint design just draw and resize and delete.
I do not think that is possible, canvas is a bitmap object as far as I know and anything you draw on it updates the image.
If you like to use circle as an object you probably should look to SVG
Citation:
"once the rectangle is drawn, the fact that it was drawn is forgotten by the system. If its position were to be changed, the entire scene would need to be redrawn, including any objects that might have been covered by the rectangle."
You could try drawing the circles on separate canvases. In this case all you would have to do is to get rid of the Canvas element containing the circle itself.
Of course this means you'll have to do use some CSS trickery (namely z-index and absolute positioning)... It also incurs some overhead. This might be acceptable if you are dealing with an adequate amount of objects.
I agree with David about SVG. That might be a good option.
With Canvas you have to start setting up your own framework. I started a few simple tutorials on the subject, including resizing shapes.
In short, you're gonna have to start keeping track of each object you have drawn so you can re-draw them every time something moves.
One possibility is to use a canvas library like fabric.js, which allows you to draw and access canvas objects programmatically. Having canvas contents as a number of objects makes it easy to modify those objects dynamically, without affecting anything else; move, resize, delete, clone, change properties (color, opacity, etc.)