Wikipedia:SVG help

See also: Wikipedia:Graphic Lab/Resources/SVG and Wikipedia:Graphic Lab/Illustration workshop

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SVG help Further information: Commons:Help:SVG Scalable Vector Graphics is a commonly used file format for providing a geometrical description of an image using basic objects such as labels, circles, lines, curves and polygons. An image can be reduced or enlarged to an arbitrary size, and will not suffer image data loss, nor will it become pixelated. SVG makes an excellent format for artwork, diagrams and drawings. SVG images are defined in XML text files. This means that they can be searched, indexed, scripted, and compressed. Since they are XML files, SVG images can be edited with any text editor, but SVG-based drawing programs are also available. However, the rendering engine used by wiki is not perfect, and may cause the image to be shown incorrectly, or differently from how it is displayed in your vector editor of choice. This page enables authors experiencing problems with SVG graphics to obtain some help in getting their images into wiki the way they intend.

Things we can help with Understanding SVG Questions about the SVG format Using SVG appropriately When to (or not to) use SVG What you see is not what you get Missing objects from files Random filled boxes in the image Images that are the wrong size Font inconsistencies Other weird and wonderful bugs Something new Questions that you can't find a better place for

General suggestions The following is a list of common vector editors and suggested settings for compatibility. The user guide of your chosen program may also be valuable in troubleshooting. Browsers Most modern browsers can render SVGs in view-only mode. It may be convenient to set a browser as the default SVG viewer, but you can also paste the file path into the address bar. Please note that even if your browser renders an SVG correctly, it may render differently on Wikipedia. Text editors SVG documents are text files, and can be edited like any other text file. Specifically, SVGs are XML documents, which have special support in many text editors. One potential disadvantage to editing SVGs by hand is that previewing your changes is more cumbersome. A rudimentary solution would be to open the SVG file in a browser while working on it, and manually refreshing the document to see the result of changes. Inkscape There is a simple work-around for the scarcities of librsvg. The operation "Stroke to Path", to be found under Menu>Path in Inkscape or via Ctrl+Alt+C, can be applied to all of the objects that are not rendered correctly. To keep the SVGs editable, this should only be done to the files intended for upload, and these files can be deleted afterwards. As of February 2014, the objects that must be modified to render correctly by librsvg include: Lines with arrow heads (the arrows need to be converted) Text, that has been transformed, e.g. "Text on Path" Compound objects created with the binary path tools (union, intersect etc.) OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org SVG files may require manual modification before being uploaded to Wikipedia. To achieve this: Change all fonts to Wikipedia supported fonts as mentioned before. (E.g. change "Sans embedded" to "DejaVu Sans".) Add "px" to all font-size references. (E.g. change "font-size:100" to "font-size:100px".) Remove all additional x coordinate references in tspan elements. (E.g. change <tspan x="17583 17917 " y="10943"> to <tspan x="17583" y="10943">.) [Not required for OO 2.3.0] Explicitly colour all text (e.g. black) by replacing relevant "stroke:none;fill:none" instances with "stroke:none;fill:rgb(0,0,0)" (note that simply explicitly colouring text black in OpenOffice 3.2.1 does not appear to work). NB: Vector graphics line widths may also need to be set explicitly in OpenOffice.org Draw. SVG code replacement guide (executing replace all using Nedit regular expressions) Original text Replacement text Sans embedded DejaVu Sans tspan x="([0-9]*) ([0-9 ]*)" tspan x="\1" This SVG export procedure has been tested using OO 2.3.0 and OO 3.2.1 with a simple .odg candidate. Microsoft Powerpoint It is easiest to save entire slides from Powerpoint as svg rather than saving multiselected objects with right click / save as picture, because for entire slides the boundaries will be cropped to the size of the slide and the background will be set to white. To save slides as svg, use file / save as / browse / save as type --> svg. If your slide has text, open the exported svg into Notepad and replace all the existing font-family specifications with font-family="Liberation Sans,sans-serif". This specification will make Wikimedia render SVG fonts similarly to how browsers render Wikipedia fonts. Text can also get chopped up on export, which causes rendering and localization bugs. To fix this, search for all </text> tags and make sure the tag isn't embedded in another text tag that's on the same line of text. Most embedded text tags can simply be deleted; however, but if content needs to be subscripted or subscripted, then replace the text tag with a tspan specifiction. For subscripts, use <tspan font-size="smaller" baseline-shift="sub">. For superscripts, use <tspan font-size="smaller" baseline-shift="super">. Microsoft Visio Generating SVG charts from spreadsheet programs such as Microsoft Excel General concept above; examples below. Warming stripes (five examples compared) ... in a shape Warming stripes bar chart Bar chart Pie chart Variable-width bar chart Line charts Scatterplot Radar chart I've uploaded spreadsheets that automatically generate XML code for charts in SVG format. Summary: You simply paste or enter your data into the spreadsheet, and specify image dimensions, number of grid lines, data ranges, font sizes, etc. The spreadsheets instantly and automatically generate a column of XML code. You simply copy and paste that code into a text editor and save as an ".svg" file. The spreadsheets produce lean SVG code, and should save you time in creating SVG charts. Though my original spreadsheets are written in Microsoft Excel, I've received reports that they also work if read into other spreadsheet programs. Feedback and suggestions on my talk page are welcome. RCraig09 (talk) 23:41, 19 February 2021 (UTC) Click HOW TO for detailed explanation. Click HERE (else HERE) to download the spreadsheets. Click here to see an example of how the spreadsheets work, internally. Example SVG files: Category:SVG graphics created with spreadsheet. Warming stripes — Accepts a single dataset and converts to SVG code portraying Ed Hawkins' warming stripes graphics. User chooses vertical or horizontal stripes; normal or reverse data ordering; or from a variety of geometric shapes (updated 17 May 2023). . . . . Click here to see examples of warming stripes embedded in different shapes. Warming stripes bar chart — Accepts a single dataset and creates a conventional bar chart whose individual bars/columns are coloured according to Dr. Hawkins' warming stripes colour scheme. Alternate option: choose one colour for ascending bars and another colour for descending bars. (updated 28 August 2023) Line charts — Accepts up to six datasets. (updated 30 August 2023) Vertical bar charts (column charts) — Accepts up to six datasets. Toggle between clustered and stacked charts; user can adjust "Yfloor"—the Y level (usually=0) from which columns rise or fall; user chooses to keep or ignore negative input values. (updated 27 August 2023) Horizontal bar charts — Accepts up to six datasets. Toggle between clustered and stacked charts; user can adjust "Yfloor"—the value (usually=0) from which bars extend; user chooses to keep or ignore negative input values. (updated 27 August 2023) Scatter plots — Accepts up to five datasets. (updated 28 August 2023) Pie charts — Accepts a single dataset of up to 36 items. (updated 17 May 2023) Variable-width bar charts — Accepts up to six datasets; is like "Vertical bar charts", above, but user can choose different widths for different bars. (updated 27 August 2023) Radar charts — Accepts up to six datasets. (updated 6 May 2025) Text guidance Use text over paths Converting text in an SVG file into paths (shapes) increases file size, prevents localization/accessibility features, and complicates edits/modifications down the line. It is therefore generally disfavored, with some exceptions, such as text-based logos. The Wikimedia text renderer can introduce bugs as its fonts may differ from browser fonts or SVG editor fonts, but following the guidance below should minimize these errors. font-family property Tracked in Phabricator Task T180923 Fallback fonts Due to copyright restrictions, MediaWiki cannot use proprietary fonts that are commonly found on several proprietary operating systems. Fonts such as Geneva require licensing fees to distribute. rsvg will not be able to locate such fonts, and the text will fail to appear in the rendered image. There are three solutions to this issue: One can substitute a font that is available on Wikipedia. This approach facilitates editability. One can specify a generic font-family such as "sans-serif", "serif", or "monospace", but this can lead to inconsistent rendering. It is better to specify a font available on Wikipedia (such as Liberation Sans) with fallback fonts such as: font-family="Liberation Sans,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif", in which you define a font-list with similar fonts that at least contain one font for each Operating System such as Wikimedia (e.g. Liberation Sans), Windows (e.g. Arial), Linux (e.g. Liberation Sans), Mac (e.g. Helvetica). Since local rendering should be as close as possible to Wikipedia, it should use locally the same font as it will have on Wikipedia, if available. Therefore always define a Wikimedia-font first. Also, Wikimedia has synonyms for substituting fonts, such as "Arial" for "Liberation Sans"; therefore font-family="Arial,DejaVu Sans" will be rendered by "Liberation Sans" and not (as expected) by "DejaVu Sans". (This is because "Liberation Sans" has the same letter size as "Arial" [metric-compatible], so it is less likely to mess up the text flow.) Group the text, create a copy, and convert the copy to paths. Then either: move the original, editable non-path text into a separate editable text layer that you make transparent (warning: this might be removed by SVG optimizers), or move the original, editable non-path text outside the visible area (example: File:Essigsäuresynthesen.svg). For ease of subsequent editing and significantly smaller file sizes, substituting the font with an available font is recommended. Many common fonts have non-proprietary alternatives that are similar in typographical style, resulting in minimal disruption to existing images during substitution. For a list of fonts available in Wikipedia, see available fonts on Meta. Wikimedia has default fonts, and will use Liberation Serif for Times New Roman and Liberation Sans for Arial. For further fallbacks see c:Help:SVG#fallback. Fonts that are available on Wikimedia servers may or may not be available on a visitor's machine. If the placement or appearance of text in the image is important and there is uncertainty about which fonts are installed on a visitor's machine, then converting text into path information may be necessary. font-size property Rendering anomalies may occur in thumbnail views if small font sizes are used. Declaring font-size="35" (or larger) appears to avoid this problem, depending on the pixel size of your graphic. Fonts should be sized so that they look good as thumbnails on wikipedia pages and so they are easy to view on smartphones. Smartphones are how most people access wikipedia. Thumbnails are how most other people see images, as very few people click images and zoom them in to see them. Avoid using or creating images with fonts that are too small to be legible in thumbnail or smartphone views. The font size that appears in a thumbnail is a combination of svg width, thumbnail width, and font size. To match wikipedia font size as a thumbnail, use font-size = (63/(your upright value))*((your svg width)/1000). For instance, if the thumbnail will be scaled up to thumb upright=1.35 and your image has svg width of 960, set font-size in the svg to (63/1.35)*(960/1000) = 44.8. Background colors Transparent backgrounds are fine, but do not think your image will always be displayed on a light or white background. The wikipedia smartphone app, for instance, renders images on a black background, so if you show black text on a transparent background it will be invisible. Testing for problems The following SVG checkers may help you to detect SVG problems before you upload: WMF Labs SVG check Commons SVG Checker w3.org validator None of these checkers are foolproof, so it's wise to validate images. You can preliminarily validate images by uploading them to the shared, temporary-use location Test.svg, though other users may overwrite your image at any time. To force refresh images in your browser use Ctrl+F5 (Shift-Reload on Mac), so that you see the latest upload and not cached image copies (this is necessary even on wikimedia upload pages). Rendering SVG files On Wikipedia SVGs are interpreted by the librsvg-library to create PNG previews at different image sizes (to rasterize them). That library only recognizes a subset of all valid SVG syntax, and may render your SVG without many features. In order to bypass these deficiencies in the library, there are certain parameters that need to be formatted in specific ways or be assigned a workaround value in order for librsvg to accurately render views of your SVG file. Some issues are enumerated below, but be sure to test your SVG files before and after uploading them. <mask> parameter maskUnits="userSpaceOnUse" The librsvg-library does not interpret the value of "userSpaceOnUse" for the parameter maskUnits correctly. To bypass this issue, replace maskUnits="userSpaceOnUse" with maskUnits="-10% -10% 120% 120%", and the SVG mask will render properly on Wikipedia. parameter stroke-dasharray The librsvg-library does not accept a stroke-dasharray parameter with values separated by spaces. Replace all spaces with commas to bypass this issue: Example: replace stroke-dasharray="2 3 2 4" with stroke-dasharray="2,3,2,4" Use href= alone, not xlink:href=, in <use ___/> statements xlink:href was deprecated and replaced by href in SVG 2, released in 2018. Between 2023 and 2024, Wikimedia's SVG renderer has been updated to follow suit, so xlink:href no longer works. Instead, href should now be used. CSS selectors or identifiers must start with a letter or hyphen http://w3.org/TR/css-syntax-3 states, "Property names and at-rule names are always identifiers, which have to start with a letter or a hyphen..." Common problems Misaligned text Tracked in Phabricator Task T97233 The latest thumbnail-image-maker (named rsvg) unfortunately has a bug which misaligns centre- or right-aligned text tags containing tspan tags on the same line. SVG with assorted workarounds for T97233 While developers work on a solution, here are some remedies in decreasing usefulness: Left-align affected text tags with text-anchor="start" Specify either the y or dy attribute for affected tspan tags If using multiple tspan tags on a line for: word and character spacing, use: &#160; (non-breaking space), &#8201; (thin space) and/or &#8202; (hair space) characters the letter-spacing attribute a monospaced font such as Liberation Mono (last resort) subscripts or superscripts, use Unicode subscripts and superscripts bolding or italicizing variables etc in mathematics, use Unicode Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols Merge affected tspan tags, even unitalicising variables etc if above methods fail Convert text into shapes (last resort, as the text can no longer be amended, copied or read by screen-readers) flowRoot does not appear a picture containing SVG1.2-valid flowRoot Tracked in Phabricator Task T43424 Declined If a black box appears, read c:User:JoKalliauer/RepairFlowRoot how to solve this issue, but do not remove those objects since they might contain text. The workarounds that one can employ are either not to use flowed text (by using the text tool without creating a text field), or convert the text to normal text (by Text-editor or sed-command, or with Inkscape-GUI or with a Inkscape-batch), but to stroke the text using "object to path", since path-text is not recommended and increases file-size. Missing embedded JPEG images Tracked in Phabricator Task T193929 Invalid Normal image Broken image When a raster graphic is embedded in an SVG it is encoded into base64 data. That data is then assigned a MIME type in the <image> element. In the case of an embedded JPEG, the MIME type is "image/jpeg". Older versions of Inkscape (and possibly other editors) assigned the MIME type "image/jpg". While Inkscape and most web browsers will display such an SVG image just fine, the MediaWiki software that rasterizes the SVG file will have trouble with it. Not recognizing the MIME type "image/jpg" there will simply be an empty space where the image is supposed to be. The fix is to open the SVG file in a text editor, find the <image> element, locate "image/jpg", change it to "image/jpeg" and re-save. At right is an example of this problem. The Commons SVG Checker looks for this problem; see Commons:Commons:Commons SVG Checker/KnownBugs#Checks for details. Though Web browsers cope with image tags without width and height specified, librsvg ignores such images. Further issues Further issues can be found at c:Librsvg_bugs or at Commons:Commons:Commons SVG Checker/KnownBugs, and examples can be found at c:Category:Pictures_demonstrating_a_librsvg_bug. However most issues (for files <1MB) can be fixed using https://svgworkaroundbot.toolforge.org/ (enable "run svgcleaner" and enable "run scour" before clicking convert), for a more detailed list check c:User:SVGWorkaroundBot.

Assistance

If you have a tricky SVG file with a problem not described, or can't quite figure out what the previous section was talking about, you can simply ask for assistance by posting a quick note hereafter that outlines the problem, as well as providing links to the files that are exhibiting these problems. Don't forget to sign your name with four tilde symbols (~~~~) and an editor will attempt to reply here to help!

When you are happy that a request has been fulfilled, just leave a note so that the request can be archived later, as needed.

An alternative source of help is Commons:Graphics village pump.

Current requests

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Embed svg directly

Front view
(half-speed)

Top view
(half-speed)

SVG animation of a pendulum wave with 12 pendulums, the lowest pendulum making 60 oscillations in one minute, the next 61, and so forth – in the animations, tap or hover over a pendulum to pause

is there a way i can force wikipedia to directly embed svgs instead of embedding the thumbnail in my browser? im not asking about doing it on a page im editing, im asking about doing it to all pages in my browser thanks! Specimen3757 (talk) 17:10, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

I don't think so. I suspect the reason why not is security concerns about embedding user-generated markup. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:54, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

ah. that actually does make a lot of sense. thanks! - Specimen3757 (talk) 20:49, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

@Specimen3757: Not directly, but you can link a thumbnail to an SVG in Commons using {{filepath:FILENAME}} as in this example (click the thumbnail or the link beneath). cmɢʟee τaʟκ (please add {{ping|cmglee}} to your reply) 01:11, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

@Cmglee: That's OK if the image is public domain, but not if it's licensed CC BY-SA (or CC BY). Also, why is [{{filepath:...}} ...] necessary? Does [[Media:...|...]] not work? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:29, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

An interactive SVG

Though Media: creates a direct link to a file, filepath: returns just the file's URL, and thus can be added as a link parameter of a thumbnail so that clicking the thumbnail goes to the file instead of Media Viewer or the file description page, perhaps closer to what the questioner intended. A messier alternative is to use an imagemap covering the entire thumbnail.

Can you please link to guidance that CC-BY files cannot be linked this way legally?

Cheers, cmɢʟee τaʟκ (please add {{ping|cmglee}} to your reply) 19:54, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

It's stated in at least three different places:

• Template:Multiple image#Syntax and parameters includes If the image is under a free license (such as the GDFL or a free CC license), the terms of such license require the license, or a link to it, to be reproduced with the image. The image must, therefore, link to its image description page, which can be achieved simply by omitting the link[n] parameter from the template as mentioned. Public domain and (theoretically) non-free use images are not subject to this restriction.
• MOS:NOALT says: Removing the link is acceptable only for images in the public domain or the equivalent CC0. Links should not be suppressed for any image that requires attribution.
• WP:EIS#Link says: Except for public-domain images, it must always be possible for the reader to reach the image-description page, so |link= should be used only with |thumb images.

The first two images as used above are not thumb images; there is no means of reaching the file description page in order to view the license and attribution. The third, on the other hand, includes a magnifying glass icon (bottom right) which provides that link. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:22, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

Got it, so it's ok if there is a magnifying glass or similar icon linking to the file description page. I edited the multiimage above, but the wikitext becomes very messy. Furthermore, the magnifying glass image itself is CC-BY-SA so will that need another icon to link to its file description page? How does one get the default image used in thumbnails? cmɢʟee τaʟκ (please add {{ping|cmglee}} to your reply) 01:02, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

Don't worry about the magnifying glass, it's used millions of times so this must have been raised before. What do you mean by "the default image used in thumbnails"? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:55, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

I meant the smaller rectangle on top of a larger one as in the thumbnail caption above. cmɢʟee τaʟκ (please add {{ping|cmglee}} to your reply) 19:48, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

This one? As I say, don't worry about it. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:03, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

rsvg messes up radial gradient in a transformed path

In earlier versions, the gradients do not form neat spotlights as in browser rendering

In this thumbnail, when I applied a "matrix(1,-0.5 0,1 -70,-35)" transform on a path which has a radial gradient, the gradient bleeds to the edge of the path. The desired effect, similar to File:3d-ambigram.jpg, is correctly rendered in Chrome and Firefox. Can anyone please suggest a solution or workaround if I still wish to use the transform?

Note: The bug still appears when the Gaussian blur filter is removed.

Thanks, cmɢʟee τaʟκ (please add {{ping|cmglee}} to your reply) 01:09, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

I notice that some (all?) of your matrix values have both commas and spaces between values. This might be a situation like #parameter stroke-dasharray above, so try using commas consistently, as in

<g transform="matrix(1,-0.5,0,1,-70,-35)">

--Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:52, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

Re stroke-dasharray: I've used it in spaced form with no problems, e.g. in File:Tschirnhausen cubic spline.svg. Is this working finally or is it merely that I'm using it in such a simple form (only one length for both dash and space) that the buggy and correct behavior look the same? —David Eppstein (talk) 21:54, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

I haven't noticed any problems with stroke-dasharray. The only such issue I'm aware of is with viewBox (and total lack of delimiters around the a (arc) path command's Boolean flags, e.g. a7.147 7.147 0 011.77-1.306). cmɢʟee τaʟκ (please add {{ping|cmglee}} to your reply) 02:22, 13 October 2025 (UTC) cmɢʟee τaʟκ (please add {{ping|cmglee}} to your reply) 02:22, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion. I've delimited terms with commas and still get the same result. cmɢʟee τaʟκ (please add {{ping|cmglee}} to your reply) 19:48, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

Resolved

In case it's useful to anyone in the future, rsvg seems to require gradientUnits="userSpaceOnUse" to successfully transform a gradient along with its shape. cx, cy, r and other parameters must be tweaked to match. However, rsvg doesn't accept percentages in the parameters so their values in pixels must be estimated. cmɢʟee τaʟκ (please add {{ping|cmglee}} to your reply) 19:04, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

For attributes such as cx= etc., if you specify the value in pixels, it's a known distance from the origin. which is itself defined by the viewBox= attribute. However, whilst that attribute also defines the size of the visible portion of the canvas, it doesn't define the size of the drawing canvas, which is unbounded, and effectively infinite. I think that the problem is that if you specify a percentage, it needs to be a percentage of some known value - and what is, for example, 50% of infinity? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:48, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Good analysis; that makes sense, though it's a hassle in practice as one needs to know the size of the shape being filled unlike when gradientUnits="userSpaceOnUse" isn't used. Cheers, cmɢʟee τaʟκ (please add {{ping|cmglee}} to your reply) 02:13, 13 October 2025 (UTC)