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Following up on the whole thread on vector and bitmap formats for Visio
diagrams:
Visio diagrams start out as vector graphics. They consist of individual
lines, shapes and objects, and are not tied to any specific screen/printer
resolution. This makes them
- scalable in your document without loss of quality (you can resize them at
will to fit well into your page layout)
- zoomable in your document or on the Web in the viewer's browser, without
loss of quality (they don't become jaggy, pixelated, blocky...)
- display at optimal quality on any size/resolution screen (it renders using
the screen's own maximum resolution)
- print at optimal quality using the printer's maximum resolution (so you
always get a sharp, crisp printout)
- fully editable in applications that natively support the vector format you
choose (e.g. MIF in FrameMaker, WMF in MS Word)
- searchable in viewing applications that support that (e.g. you can search
for text strings in an SVG diagram with the Adobe SVG Viewer)
- generally smaller in filesize
When you choose to rasterize your diagrams into a bitmapped image, you lose
ALL these great quality / flexibility / intelligence advantages. Whether you
choose a high resolution or a low resolution, it is still a fixed array of
pixels that will only display well at a certain size at a certain
resolution. Popular raster image formats such as TIFF, GIF, PNG, JPEG and
BMP each have their own ways to optimalize quality, filesize, color,
compression etc., but in the end they are no match for vector graphics.
So which vector graphics format should you choose? Well, that depends on
your documentation/publishing environment. Sticking to Visio diagrams, our
customers generally choose the following:
FrameMaker - MIF
---------------------------
As MIF, you can use your Visio diagrams as if you had drawn them in Frame
itself. Unlike EPS, you can view them in vector quality on your screen, they
will print to any printer (not just PostScript), and you don't need to worry
about using all the right settings for PDF creation. Filesizes also tend to
be a lot smaller. AND, you can fully edit the diagram in Frame - colors,
linestyles, sizes, text... As a Frame native format, MIF is also
platform-independent (whereas WMF for example is a Windows-specific format).
I think that our EPS to MIF conversion filter is actually our best-selling
filter since it was first released in 1995.
SGML and IETM systems - CGM
------------------------------------------------
CGM is the official vector graphics standard for SGML publishing systems
(whereas TIFF is the raster image standard), mainly used in engineering
industries such as aerospace, defense, automotive and petroleum. For
delivering your documentation via the Web, there are excellent free CGM
browser plug-ins available, such as ActiveCGM from Micrografx. This
technology is used a lot to produce IETMs (Interactive Electronic Technical
Manuals).
MS Office applications - WMF or EMF
-------------------------------------------------------
WMF and EMF are to MS Office what MIF is to FrameMaker. So, ideal for
bringing vector graphics into Word documents, PowerPoint presentations etc.
EMF is the Enhanced version of WMF, supporting graphical features such as
true bezier curves and cropping.
XML-based publishing systems - SVG
-------------------------------------------------------
SVG is arguably the greatest thing since sliced bread: Scalable Vector
Graphics, XML, Web, and an industry-backed W3C standard at that. Standard
browser support is widely anticipated, and Adobe is distributing their free
SVG Viewer browser plug-in along with Acrobat 5 Reader. If you are doing
anything with XML and the Web, you may want to start thinking about using
SVG. One area where it is already being implemented a lot is GIS mapping and
cartography.
Note: most vector-based graphics formats (PostScript and EPS also) can also
include raster images and font text into their files, making them 'metafile'
formats really. This is confusing sometimes, as some applications output
raster WMF or raster CGM. Some screen capture tools for example let you save
as WMF, but alas, it is still nothing more than a bitmap embedded into a
vector-based shell...
Jeroen Dekker
--
Product manager, PS2vector conversion software
The Graphics Connection to FrameMaker, MS Office, SGML, XML and more
Visit http://www.square1.nl/index.htm
Tel. (+31) 71 364 8657
jeroen -at- square1 -dot- nl
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A landmark hotel, one of America's most beautiful cities, and
three and a half days of immersion in the state of the art:
IPCC 01, Oct. 24-27 in Santa Fe. http://ieeepcs.org/2001/
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