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I'm working with a bioinformatics visualization tool, which saves a biological pathway as an SVG image.
I now want to view the SVG image... but am having some trouble doing so. I tried opening it as a file in both Chrome and Firefox, but in both browsers it just opens a blank page. I clicked on "View page source" and I'm able to see the XML data of the SVG image, but still, I want to see the image itself as a graphic.
What's the easiest way to view the image as a graphic? I understand that I can embed it in an HTML page and view it that way... but that's not at all convenient, if I have to create an HTML page each time I save a pathway as an image.
By the way, I'm using a 64-bit Mac OSX version 10.8.4.
6Browsers should be able to just show it. I wonder why that's not the case for you. Can you upload an example? – slhck – 2014-10-31T19:40:39.757
Yes I thought that Firefox or at least Chrome should be able to view it. Is there a way to upload on Superuser? Or would I have to upload on a temporary hosting site? – ktm5124 – 2014-10-31T19:58:30.183
No, sorry, but any file hosting site or Dropbox or something would be possible, of course. – slhck – 2014-10-31T20:00:11.813
1I was able to open a smaller SVG file in Chrome. Could it possibly be the image size? The SVG file I'm unable to open is 20 MB. – ktm5124 – 2014-10-31T20:16:39.833
1Have you tried opening it in Inkscape? – Darth Android – 2014-10-31T20:21:17.307
I just tried opening it in Inkscape. It opened... but it's very slow and unusable. It seems like Inkscape is on the verge of crashing :( After all it's a 20MB SVG file. – ktm5124 – 2014-10-31T20:38:15.760
Yeah, after opening it in Inkscape the software is completely frozen. I can't even use the menu tools (like the 'File' menu). – ktm5124 – 2014-10-31T20:39:05.737
20 MB is a lot for a vector image. – slhck – 2014-10-31T20:49:39.727
I don't have OS X so I'm not familiar with the options available, but on Linux I would just create a small ramfs, or ramdisk. When I want to view a file I'd copy it to the ramfs, then open it, when done, remove it from the ramfs. Perhaps OS X has an option similar to
sudo mount -t ramfs -o size=40m ramfs /media/ramfs1
? – Robin Hood – 2014-11-01T20:34:06.80320 MB is really large. If the file size turns out to be the cause of the problem, you might have luck using SVGO, a command line tool that can drastically and losless shrink the SVG file. – Ideogram – 2018-09-02T14:05:39.040