.. _issues:

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 Issues with publishing pottery drawings
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Also known as “small details you should care about”.

You probably already have some drawings. It is very easy to export
them to SVG using your drawing software (at least if you're not using
AutoCAD, but still it's not very difficult to convert DXF to SVG).

You might think: “that's all!”. After all, you have chosen the best
format for publishing vector graphics on the web, your drawings can
now be both viewed and downloaded at their best quality with very
small file size. And this is true.

But you can do more, if you want. So, if converting to SVG was too
difficult or time-consuming for you, it's OK. Instead, if you are
starting a new catalog and you want to explore the possibilities that
SVG offers, this is for you.


File size
=========

SVG files generated by vector graphics programs tend to be quite
large, and their source is filled with extra attributes that are
generally useless. It's almost like creating an HTML page with a word
processor like Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Writer.

There are two ways to keep the file size small:

- use GZIP compression, that is supported by almost all viewers and
  editors, and generates files that have a very recognizable ``.svgz``
  file extension;
- tidy the SVG source using a program like Scour, that will remove
  empty XML tags, group entities with the same attributes, remove
  unnecessary decimal digits from vertex coordinates and other similar
  tasks that would be very tedious to do by hand.

The two can also be combined, of course. but tidying is more
important, because it makes the SVG source more readable, better
structured and less likely to contain useless data.