Depict - For automatically rendering d3.js fallback images
July 11, 2013
While standards-compliant browsers are gaining marketshare, most media organizations still must support Internet Explorer 8, in some fashion. Creating fallback images for svg elements is a pain (though much easier with the handy SVG Crowbar).
Wouldn’t it be great if a program could render out fallback images for SVGs automatically? Depict aims to do just that.
(Don’t get too excited; it still has a long way to go.)
As it stands today, depict is a command-line tool that converts an SVG element into a .png image. Fill in a JavaScript function with some d3.js code, and the script will do the rest.
The depict package comes with depict-init, which sets up example code that works out of the box with depict.
The tool isn’t especially useful today, but the potential is there. If you have any ideas or want to collaborate, let’s get in touch.