Stress testing Dylan Smith’s collection of email marketing logos A lot of work going forward isn’t adding extra features so much as making it more robust. We tried to cover the basics, and this feels like a sensible place to stop. There’s also features in the VML spec which aren’t supported in Outlook. Some SVG features only have a partial VML equivalent, or no semantic equivalent. We can add more support but it gets a bit gnarly from here. But to make the converter more practical, we’ve added support for these features. We can’t convert everything SVG to VML, as there isn’t always an equivalent. You can work around them by editing the SVG or VML, but you have to be comfortable doing that. In many cases it converts just fine, but you’ll run into issues at some point. We’re trying to convert what we can, and ignore the rest. But it’s still worth trying to automate some basic features, in order to make it more practical. SVG and VML each have features the other doesn’t, or only partial support for some stuff. Trying to make it more than a path converter opens a can of worms. Where possible, we wanted to convert a whole SVG file to VML, from the opening to the closing tag. There’s a bunch of assembly instructions if you like. They’re given a color, placed into groups, and transformed into place. Many contain multiple paths, not just the one. You can paste just an SVG path into the converter, and get a VML path back, but SVG files are often more complicated. This was the test we were building up to, it contains multiple paths, polygons, circles, lines etc. SVG polygons to VML, this torus was generated using our 3D to SVG tool.Īnother SVG polygon to VML test, this time with some transparency. Getting somewhere, lettering from a watch drawn in Illustrator.Ĭomplex path with lots of flourishes, at this point we were testing single paths only. Quadratic bezier curves a sub-element of pathsĭifferent ways to define an elliptical arc ( sub-element of paths ), some are working, some aren’t. But for compatibility reasons such as transforms, we went with converting all basic SVG shapes into VML paths.Įarly failed VML test, looks like an Etch a sketch. It’s semantics, as you can create all the predefined shapes from paths. an SVG circle into a VML path that’s a circle. Another which converts all SVG shapes into VML paths e.g. Each of these basic elements needs its own converter, which you then combine into one.Įarly on we had two converters, one which keeps predefined elements as they were. Middle row are custom paths, constructed from the sub-elements: cubic and quadratic bezier curves, lines and elliptical arcs. Top row are predefined shapes, these are built in shapes like circle or rectangle. We need to convert all the basic SVG elements into VML. The core task is to convert all the basic SVG elements to VML We’re trying to make use of the, ‘ whole lot of commonality’ between the specs. There’s not a VML equivalent to everything SVG, but there’s enough overlap for our purposes. So SVG is partly derived from VML, but not identical. SVG evolved out of a few 2D vector graphic formats that were around ( ~ 1998 ), one of which was VML ( Vector Markup Language ). So we decided to write an SVG to VML converter to display vectors in Outlook, and explore VML’s capabilities. Given the lack of VML authoring tools, if you want more than a button you’d have to hand code it, which Mark Robbins wrote about. Email designers use VML to fill support gaps, most often with background images thanks to Stig Morten. Although deprecated, it’s still all there, in the background. VML is a 2D vector format supported in desktop Outlook, which uses Microsoft’ Word renderer. Click on images for full-size, or email yourself a test below. VML was deprecated ~ 2011, and looks the same in all versions up to 2019. Mostly cropped screenshots of VML tests from my Outlook 2010 email client. Below is some of the process, and a look at VML layout and support. This lead to us working on an SVG to VML converter. I’d been doing some printing with some watch SVG’, and we thought it would be fun to see one render in Outlook. Converting a watch was the SVG to VML test we were building up to
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