"Copy items as SVG" option

[sergio]

A few questions about the "Copy items as SVG" from preferences:

 

- If turned off, how are items copied?

- what's the benefit of turning it on?

- if turned on, is text copied as outlines?

[Leigh]

1. When turned OFF, I copied and pasted a quick shape with a stroke and fill into Sketch. It was recognised as two objects - the stroke and the fill. They are both editable, but are treated as two separate objects - not ideal when working on a large or complicated project.

When turned ON, Sketch recognised the quick shape and treated it as one object. You could edit the stroke and file as if it was created in Sketch - sweet!

When turned ON, text was editable within Sketch.

[Dave Harris]

We put items onto the clipboard in a variety of formats and the recieving app picks which one it likes. Without SVG, it will probably use PDF or PNG. (PDF will include vectors, PNG will just give one bit bitmap.)

 

The problem with including SVG is that it doesn't have its own proper format; it gets copied as text instead. Some apps recognise the text as being valid SVG, and parse it as such, and that gives better results than PNG. Other apps paste the SVG as plain text, which is useless. For this second group of apps, not copying items as SVG will make them fall back onto PDF or PNG, which will be better for them.

 

If the app you are pasting into does something sensible when Copy items as SVG is enabled, then it's probably best to leave it enabled.

 

Both SVG and PDF should yield editable text; PNG won't.

[sergio]

Thanks for the detailed explanations @Leigh and @Dave Harris!