Scenic.FromSVG - Rapid UI prototyping for Scenic

• This library derives Scenic primitives from Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), either at runtime or compile-time. To put in other words: It converts SVG into Scenic drawing primitives.

• SVG is used to leverage wide-spread and open-source tools like Inkscape.

• Scenic is a UI framework for Elixir, mainly targeting embedded and fault-tolerant systems.

• Elixir is a language running on top of the Erlang/OTP platform, the latter of which is "used to build massively scalable soft real-time systems with requirements on high availability", quoting it's website.

• Scenic primitives are the drawing primitives offered by the Scenic framework. Examples for such primitives are: circle, rect or text. They more or less directly map to SVG primitives like <circle>, <rect> or <text>.

Example

> elixir script/svg_viewer.exs script/example.svg

Limitations

• This library is a quick-and-dirty, half-night-long proof-of-concept, implemented by looking at some Inkscape-generated SVGs and deriving some Elixir code from it, without ever having read the SVG spec thoughtfully myself. Though, the "concept" looks promising.

• Only <circle>, <ellipse>, <rect>, <text>, <g> and <path> are somewhat implemented.

• <text> does not properly map font names (yet).

• Only tested with Inkscape-generated SVG.

Use Cases

• This is NOT a general-purpose SVG viewer for Scenic!!!

• Rapid UI prototyping for Scenic. "Wireframing-Tool".

• Generate Elixir code from SVG, then hand-modify the generated code.

• My intended use case: Customers can use existing SVG-editors like Inkscape or web-based ones to design 80% of the scenes of their infotainment screens, either themselves or with the help of graphic artists. Based on these SVGs and this underlying library, deriving Elixir code becomes a lot easier and let's me concentrate on logic and dynamic functionality. It's a tool, not a 100% feature-full solution with shiny marketing brochures and mandatory training courses.

Installation

If available in Hex, the package can be installed by adding scenic_from_svg to your list of dependencies in mix.exs:

def deps do
  [
    {:scenic_from_svg, "~> 0.1.0"}
  ]
end

Documentation can be generated with ExDoc and published on HexDocs. Once published, the docs can be found at https://hexdocs.pm/scenic_from_svg.