svgsubfig 0.2.1

Compose raster and vector images to publication-ready figures for scientific journals

svgsubfig

A python package for swift arrangement of raster images and vector graphics into a single figure based on SVG.

This package is focussed on the preparation of high quality figures that consist of several subimages, both vector and raster graphics, for publication in scientific journals. A label is inserted below each subimage, e.g. (a), (b), ...

Font family, size and gaps can be adjusted based on a JSON configuration. An example figure created with svgsubfig could look like this:

Basic usage

Installation

svgsubfig can be installed using pip:

pip install svgsubfig

Configuration

Create a JSON configuration file with the following structure, use relative filenames for the individual (sub-)images (the directory of the config file acts as base directory).

{
    "gap-between": 5,
    "gap-label": 3,
    "width": 150,
    "font-size": 9,
    "font-family": "Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif",
    "images": [
        "img/dog.jpeg",
        "img/population.svg"
    ],
    "description": [
        "A dog.",
        "The dogs population."
    ]
}

Following keys are available for the config file:

• description: Text to be added after each label.
• font-family: Typeface used in the SVG file for text.
• font-size: Size of the labeling of the images in pt.
• gab-between: Spacing between the subimages in mm.
• gap-label: Spacing between labels and lower boundary of the images in mm.
• images: Array of file paths of the images to include into the figure.
• index-offset: Offset of the first subimage index, e.g. if index-offset = 3, the first label will be (d)
• width: Width of the figure in mm.

To use automatic conversion of the created SVG figure file into PDF and PNG file formats, Inkscape needs to be installed and accessible on PATH.

Figure composition

To create the final figure using the JSON configuration, a small svgsubfig command line utility can be used, but also scripting is possible.

Command line utility

To use the svgsubfig module to create the final figure file, use following command in your terminal:

python -m svgsubfig [--noconvert] CONFIG_PATH

Replace CONFIG_PATH with the path of the JSON config file. Option --noconvert prevents conversion of the created SVG into PDF and PNG with Inkscape, which is useful in case Inkscape is not installed, or manual edits on the created SVG file are necessary.

Script

import svgsubfig.utility as util

from svgsubfig import SVGSubFigure
from pathlib import Path

pth_config = Path("figure.json")
pth_svg = pth_config.with_suffix(".svg")

fig = SVGSubFigure.from_json(pth_config)
fig.save(pth_svg)

util.convert_svg(pth_svg)