Affinity created SVGs break at import in android studio

[Inspirimental]

Hi Affinity Team,

we are developing more and more apps in both iOS and Android. PDFs from Affinity Designer imported in XCODE work fine. SVGs from Affinity Designer imported in Android Studio break once in a while. Certain paths in the SVG won't be shown after import. There seems to be a problem with certain path directions. So if the first path is clockwise, all following paths that are drawn counter-clockwise won't be able to be imported into Android Studio. (Please see third attachment)

If I import the Affinity SVG (that doesn't work in Android Studio) into Adobe Illustrator and then export the file again as an SVG, the import in Android Studio works find. I don't know if Adobe is setting all paths to the same draw-direction when they export to SVG.

 

Please find attached
1) a SVG from Affinity Designer
2) the same exported from Illustrator and
3) the import result in Android Studio with die Affinity SVG.

If I can provide further information, please let me know.
Tim

icon_Affinity-Designer.svg

icon_Illustrator.svg

[Gabe]

Hi @Inspirimental,

Can you please attach the .afdesign file so we can have a look?

Thanks,

Gabe. 

[Inspirimental]

Of course. Here we go.

icon.afdesign

[Inspirimental]

Hi Affinity-Team,
any news on this topic?

Tim

[Gabe]

Hey there. Sorry for the delayed reply.

We looked into this and the issue seems to be half on our side, half on Android Studio's side. 

So. When we export as SVG, we declare all the attributes in the <svg.... > tag, and Android Studio seems to ignore them.

<svg width="100%" height="100%" viewBox="0 0 128 128" version="1.1" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xml:space="preserve" xmlns:serif="http://www.serif.com/" style="fill-rule:evenodd;clip-rule:evenodd;stroke-linejoin:round;stroke-miterlimit:1.41421;">

On the other side, Illustrator declares them in a <style> tag

<svg id="Ebene_1" data-name="Ebene 1" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 612 612">
    <defs>
        <style>
        .cls-1 {
            fill: #004182;
            fill-rule: evenodd;
        }
        </style>
    </defs>

I have logged this with our developers to see if we can do something similar in the future. 

I have moved this to feature requests. 

[MmmMaarten]

@GabrielM Some of the exported attributes in the <svg> aren't even nececary and redundant. Could your developers look into that too please as we like to keep our online svg's as small as possible?! Thanks!

[gabriel_komorov]

@wigglepixel @Inspirimental

https://jakearchibald.github.io/svgomg/

Use this for any svg you have problem with. It cleans, simplifies, minifies, prettifies and whatnotifies xml code

Never had any problem with importing to AS after running svg throuhg it

 

[MmmMaarten]

1 hour ago, gabriel_komorov said:

@wigglepixel @Inspirimental

https://jakearchibald.github.io/svgomg/

Use this for any svg you have problem with. It cleans, simplifies, minifies, prettifies and whatnotifies xml code

Never had any problem with importing to AS after running svg throuhg it

 

Yes, SVGO, the underlying framework that does this, is great. But this goes with a warning: it can break your svg's if you don't know what you're doing. Minifying is not always without cost. It all depends on how you set your options. It changes your svg structure and can delete parts of your svg and round values causing your svg to visually change. Stating this 'cleans' and 'fixes' svgs is just not right and can even be the other way around too.

[gabriel_komorov]

1 hour ago, wigglepixel said:

Yes, SVGO, the underlying framework that does this, is great. But this goes with a warning: it can break your svg's if you don't know what you're doing. Minifying is not always without cost. It all depends on how you set your options. It changes your svg structure and can delete parts of your svg and round values causing your svg to visually change. Stating this 'cleans' and 'fixes' svgs is just not right and can even be the other way around too.

It's not like you do adjustments blindly  though - there's preview how SVG looks at any given moment. So I'm not sure what you trying to say here... 

[Inspirimental]

Thanks @GabrielM. Looking forward to the next AD updates.

And thanks @gabriel_komorov for the workaround.

[cazador]

@Gabein February 2019 you wrote:

Quote

 

I have logged this with our developers to see if we can do something similar in the future. 

I have moved this to feature requests. 

Do you have any news on this topic? I'm using AP v1.9.3 for exporting SVGs and Android Studio is still complaining:

Thanks for your help.

[Gabe]

I'm afraid no. Sorry. 

[aheadoftime]

Any news ?

Affinity, do you have any plan for this issue ?

P.s. there is no point for a web / android / ios developer (maybe designer) to buy it without the ability to use it in Apps.

[fde101]

On 6/14/2021 at 11:06 AM, cazador said:

@Gabein February 2019 you wrote:

Do you have any news on this topic? I'm using AP v1.9.3 for exporting SVGs and Android Studio is still complaining:

Thanks for your help.

The <image> tag in SVG is used to embed images (which may be raster or other SVG vector images) inside an SVG image.

I seriously doubt the issue is with the attributes being in the <svg> tag instead of a <style> tag if Android Studio is giving that particular error.

As the <image> tag is perfectly valid in SVG, I would suggest that this particular error is 100% the fault of Android Studio, not of the Affinity products.

 

That said, you might still check to see if some part of your document is being rasterized on export, as that would require this tag to be used, and would at the same time prevent it from actually being a vector image.  If rasterization of the image is required for export, you might be better off simply exporting as a PNG or other raster image format rather than wrapping it with an SVG.

[Bill Bourque]

I've run into this also. When trying some tests with just basic shapes set to both solid and with strokes, they all seem to come in as a solid shape. I'll include some screengrabs to show what I am talking about. 
Here is the test file created in AD:

And just to verify that it was exported as just a regular svg:

This is how it appears in Edge:

But when I try to import into Android Studio, I get an error:

I've tried the flatten options and the two digital options and none of them work. But if I use Inkscape and save as svg I don't have any issues. Any insight on how to get around this? It's not that big a deal to use Inkscape as an exporter. It literally only takes a matter of seconds to do. But it would be nice if I could do everything natively in Affinity Designer. 

 

[Bill Bourque]

But this is what it looks like when I make it in Inkscape and open in Android Studio. 

[v_kyr]

Why don't you look at the generated SVG code inside an text editor at line 6 in order to see if maybe a raster based uuencoded binary "<image>" has been generated instead of plain vectors here?

That shown error message suggerates that there is probably some problem with an image then!

Take a look at the by ADe and Inkscape generated SVG files inside an text editor and compare them!

[Bill Bourque]

That's what line 6 says from the SVG created in Affinity Designer

 

 

[Bill Bourque]

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>

<!-- Created with Inkscape (http://www.inkscape.org/) -->

 

<svg

   width="210mm"

   height="297mm"

   viewBox="0 0 210 297"

   version="1.1"

   id="svg5"

   xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"

   xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">

  <defs

     id="defs2" />

  <g

     id="layer1">

    <circle

       style="fill:#000000;fill-rule:evenodd;stroke:#000000;stroke-width:4.99999;paint-order:markers stroke fill"

       id="path234"

       cx="50.666031"

       cy="55.732635"

       r="35.466225" />

    <path

       id="circle290"

       style="fill:#000000;fill-rule:evenodd;stroke:#000000;stroke-width:4.99999;paint-order:markers stroke fill"

       d="M 147.43803 33.946248 A 35.466225 35.466225 0 0 0 111.97198 69.412301 A 35.466225 35.466225 0 0 0 135.33179 102.72448 A 35.466225 35.466225 0 0 1 129.70526 83.599032 A 35.466225 35.466225 0 0 1 165.17131 48.132979 A 35.466225 35.466225 0 0 1 177.2946 50.271867 A 35.466225 35.466225 0 0 0 147.43803 33.946248 z " />

    <circle

       style="fill:none;fill-rule:evenodd;stroke:#000000;stroke-width:4.99999;paint-order:markers stroke fill"

       id="circle349"

       cx="67.892479"

       cy="168.7179"

       r="35.466225" />

    <path

       id="circle906"

       style="fill:#000000;fill-rule:evenodd;stroke:#000000;stroke-width:4.99999;paint-order:markers stroke fill"

       d="M 157.06483 155.03808 A 35.466225 35.466225 0 0 0 121.59826 190.50413 A 35.466225 35.466225 0 0 0 157.06483 225.9707 A 35.466225 35.466225 0 0 0 192.53088 190.50413 A 35.466225 35.466225 0 0 0 157.06483 155.03808 z M 157.06483 174.4431 A 16.061014 16.061014 0 0 1 173.12587 190.50413 A 16.061014 16.061014 0 0 1 157.06483 206.56517 A 16.061014 16.061014 0 0 1 141.0038 190.50413 A 16.061014 16.061014 0 0 1 157.06483 174.4431 z " />

  </g>

</svg>

[Bill Bourque]

That's the SVG created in Inkscape 

[Lee Phillips]

A little late to the party, but any newcomers with this issue, try this:

1. Select the Node Tool.
2. Select all nodes of any offending shapes.
3. In the menu bar up top select "Reverse Curves". It is the last button in the "Action" section.

Now export & try again.