in reply to Interfacing Perl and SVG

If you're doing the highlighting client-side (via rollovers) I'd just use the SVG DOM for it. Unfortunately perl doesn't have a fully capable SVG parser yet (though AxPoint contains an SVG path parser which you may find useful - that's probably the hardest part), so in order to get at those bits you're better off doing it client side.

Unlike HTML, SVG has a very stable client-side Javascript spec, and works very well in the Adobe viewer (using the mozilla javascript engine).

If that doesn't cover what you're after, then yes, parse with a SAX parser and extract the paths. I don't know how they'll be done in your SVG (there are various different ways in SVG to define a path).

The other thing to do is to hand-refine your SVG, so that each region is a <g> group. Then you can do funky things with those groups like enlarge and bring them forward as you mouse over them. There's been some good examples of this on XML.com.

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Re: Re: Interfacing Perl and SVG
by Baz (Friar) on Aug 14, 2002 at 16:31 UTC
    Thanks Matts,

    I've now defined my paths inside the "def" tags so I can make use of the "use" tags which allow me to display multiple versions of my map. I was thinking of making all the dynamic values, such as the type of fill required for each county, part of a Javascript array. That would make the parsing procedure much easier, as I'd just have to stick this in at the top somewhere.

    I was also wondering about whether it would be possible to send the SVG version to the client - which is a large file at this stage, and then for each statistical set (same maps, but with new shadings) I could send them this array. No idea as of yet how this might be done... For my site I have a list of surnames, and I shade a map to show the distribution of a selected surname. Here the current png version of this

    Thanks,

    Barry.
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