This page describes the features of the SVG Rasterizer utility that comes with the Batik distribution. The SVG Rasterizer is a utility that can convert SVG files to a raster format. The tool can convert individual files or sets of files, making it easy to convert entire directories of SVG files. The provided formats are JPEG, PNG and TIFF, however the design allows new formats to be added easily. In addition, the rasterizer can (despite its name) transcode to PDF.
Downloading the rasterizer
Rasterizing one or several SVG files
The method for starting the rasterizer depends on the distribution of Batik that you chose to download. The following describes how to start the viewer for each distribution.
Using the binary distribution
If you downloaded the binary distribution of Batik, you should have a file called
batik-1.6.zip (or similar), and, after expanding that file, a jar file called
batik-rasterizer.jar. To start the rasterizer, open a console, go to the directory where you expanded the distribution (and where
batik-rasterizer.jar is located) and simply type the following at the command prompt:
java -jar batik-rasterizer.jar FILES
For example, if you type:
java -jar batik-rasterizer.jar samples/batikFX.svg
you will see the following printout:
Converting file: samples/BatikFX.svg to samples/BatikFX.png
Once the conversion is complete, you will find a
batikFX.png file in the samples directory.
You can pass options on the command line:
java -jar batik-rasterizer.jar [OPTIONS] FILES
where, as options:
specifies the output directory, or the output file if there is only a single input file,
specifies the output MIME type, which should be one of
specifies the output width as a floating point value,
specifies the output height as a floating point value,
specifies the maximum output width as a floating point value,
specifies the maximum output height as a floating point value,
specifies the area of interest (as floating point values) of the SVG file to rasterize (and if not specified, will be determined by the
viewBox attributes if specified in the document, and be 0,0,400,400 otherwise),
specifies the background fill color as an ARGB quadruple, where each component is an integer in the range 0—255,
specifies the CSS media type used for matching CSS rules,
specifies the CSS alternate stylesheet to use,
specifies the CSS user stylesheet to use in addition to any other referenced or embedded stylesheets,
specifies default font family to be used when none is specified,
specifies the RFC 3066 language code to use,
specifies the quality of the output image, as a floating point number in the range 0 < quality < 1 when generating JPEG images,
specifies the number of bits per pixel of the output image, using an adaptive pallete, resulting in an indexed image when generating PNG images,
specifies the resolution of the output image in dots per inch,
specifies that the source SVG files must be validated against their DTDs,
specifies that the SVG files should be rasterized after dispatching the SVG load event,
specifies the document time that should be seeked to before rasterizing the document, implying -onload,
specifies that any security checks on the scripts running as a result of dispatching the SVG load event will be bypassed,
specifies that scripts can be loaded from any location, while by default they can only be loaded from the same location as the document, and
specifies a list of script types (i.e., values for the
type attribute on
script elements) that should be loaded.
java -jar batik-rasterizer.jar -d myDir -m image/jpeg samples/*.svg
will generate JPEG images for all the SVG files found in the samples directory.
Using the source distribution
If you downloaded the source distribution of Batik, you got a zip or tar file that expanded into a directory called
version. In that directory, you can find build scripts for the platform you are running on. For example, there is a
build.bat script for users of the Windows platform and there is a
build.sh script for UNIX users.
To start the rasterizer you should:
Make sure that your
JAVA_HOMEenvironment variable is set to your JDK installation directory.
Open a command line window and go to the
versiondirectory where the Batik distribution was expanded.
- For windows, type the following at the command prompt:
and for Unix:
This will print out a help message for the rasterizer.
You can pass options to the rasterizer as follows, for Windows:
build svgrasterizer [OPTIONS] FILES
and for Unix:
./build.sh svgrasterizer [OPTIONS] FILES
Refer to “Using the binary distribution” for an explanation of the options.
Rasterizer Ant task
The Rasterizer task is an Ant version of the rasterizer utility. It fulfills the same basic purpose as the utility but has a different syntax and a slightly different set of features.
The task is able to produce four raster formats: PNG, JPEG, TIFF and PDF.
Using the rasterizer task
The first thing to do is to compile rasterizer task classes. Download the source distribution of Batik and see the
README file in the
contrib/rasterizertask directory for more instructions. The build procedure works the same way as when building Batik itself.
After building, ensure that the generated
batik-rasterizer.jar and the classes (or jar file) of the rasterizer task are in your
Next you have to define the task in your Ant project. To do this, add the following line either after the
project start tag or after the
target start tag in the target you are using the rasterizer task:
<taskdef name="rasterize" classname="org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.optional.RasterizerTask"/>
Parameters of the Ant task
The following table lists the attributes that may be specified on the
rasterize task element.
|result||Sets the type of the result image. Only one of the following values must be used:
|height||Sets the height of the result image in pixels. The task calculates the height from the SVG file if this parameter has not been set. The rasterizer keeps the aspect ratio of the SVG file even if the both
|width||Sets the width of the result image in pixels. The task calculates the width from the SVG file if this parameter has not been set. The rasterizer keeps the aspect ratio of the SVG file even if the both
|maxheight||Sets the maximum height of the result image in pixels. The image won’t be higher than defined in this parameter, regardless of the size set in the image itself or in other parameters. This is a floating point value.||No|
|maxwidth||Sets the maximum width of the result image in pixels. The image won’t be wider than defined in this parameter, regardless of the size set in the image itself or in other parameters. This is a floating point value.||No|
|quality||Sets the quality of the produced image. The value must be greater than 0 but smaller than 1, larger numbers meaning higher quality. The quality value is used only with JPEG images. The default quality value is 0.99.||No|
|area||Defines the area in the SVG file which will be rasterized. Parts outside this area are discarded and don’t show in the result image. The area attribute value has four integers separated by commas. The first two integers set the x and y coordinates of the upper left corner of the area, respectively. The last two integers set the width and height of the area, respectively. For example,
|bg||Sets the background color of the result image. The
|media||CSS media type that is used to select a CSS stylesheet. The selected stylesheet is then used to rasterize the SVG files. Only the visual media group is supported (see the CSS2 specification for more information about media groups). The default value is
|dpi||Resolution for the result image. The attribute value is used to compute the “pixel to millimeter” ratio used when processing SVG files. The default value is 96.||No|
|lang||Language which is used select language specific areas from the SVG file during the rasterizing process. The valid values are defined in RFC3066. The default value is
|src||Name of a one input file. Use this parameter to convert just one file whose name and location are known. The
||One of the following is required:
|dest||Name of a one output file. Used this with
|srcdir||Name of the input directory.
||One of the following is required:
|destdir||Name of an output directory. Use this with the
|classname||Class name of the XML parser used to parse SVG images. The value can be either the complete classname with package information included or the special name
Examples of using the rasterizer task
The following example is the complete Ant project that converts an SVG image (called
input.svg) to a PNG image (called
<?xml version="1.0"?> <project name="RasterizerExample" default="main" basedir="."> <taskdef name="rasterize" classname="org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.optional.RasterizerTask"/> <target name="main"> <rasterize result="image/png" src="input.svg" dest="output.png"/> </target> </project>
The next example is just one task in a project. It converts all files with a
.svg suffix in the
images directory and all files in the
images2 directory to TIFF images. The resulting image files are placed in the
<rasterize result="image/tiff" destdir="results"> <fileset dir="images"> <include name="**/*.svg"/> </fileset> <fileset dir="images2"/> </rasterize>