Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could use this to convert from SVG to a Canvas element and then from Canvas to an image (via canvas.toDataURL("image/png")): https://github.com/gabelerner/canvg Still needs a very newish browser however. No IE 6-8 (& 9?) support.
I would prefer the SVG itself but this is an ideal short term solution. Thank you very much!
One takes the SVG from the browser, encodes it and sends the as the body of an email (inlined, not as an attachment). Here's the relevant part:
function render() {
var link = document.createElement('a'),
time = Date.now();
link.href = 'mailto:? subject=exported%20sketch&body=%3C%3Fxml%20version%3D%221.0%22%20standalone%3D%22no%22%3F%3E%3C!DOCTYPE%20svg%20PUBLIC%20%22-%2F%2FW3C%2F%2FDTD%20SVG%201.1%2F%2FEN%22%20%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2FGraphics%2FSVG%2F1.1%2FDTD%2Fsvg11.dtd%22%3E'+encodeURIComponent(new XMLSerializer().serializeToString(board));
link.id = time;
document.body.appendChild(link);
document.getElementById(time).dispatchEvent(new MouseEvent('click'));
document.getElementById(time).parentNode.removeChild(document.getElementById(time));
}
The other prepares it as a file and creates a download link (not seen on screen) and programmatically clicks that link to download it: function download() {
var link = document.createElement('a'),
time = Date.now(),
svg = ''+new XMLSerializer().serializeToString(board);
link.id = time;
link.setAttribute('download','sketch.svg');
link.href = 'data:text/html;charset=utf-8,' + encodeURIComponent(svg);
document.body.appendChild(link);
document.getElementById(time).dispatchEvent(new MouseEvent('click'));
document.getElementById(time).parentNode.removeChild(document.getElementById(time));
}
But be forewarned, since SVG uses XML namespaces instead of HTML, using things like '.innerHTML' won't work in certain browsers (iOS Mobile Safari for example) while innerHTML does tend to work as you would expect on most desktop browsers!Canvas would work for exporting a bitmapped snapshot of the vector, but lacks the following:
- filesize: SVG is vector, but Canvas renders a bitmap
- non-destructive: SVG is human-editable after the fact, bitmaps only 'remember' the value of the top-most pixel and 'forgets' everything that has overlapped
- human-editable: Though not pretty, SVG's can be read and edited by hand, bitmaps require a graphics tool to edit easily