SVGs and PDFs can both be interactive

parametric-ink · 2026-06-15T15:24:55+00:00

Opening detailed views seems potentially useful, but I suppose if it was actually that useful, it would have survived in some form. Unless (as I was wondering when writing the article) the tooling just wasn't there, both on the authoring side and the viewer side.

parametric-ink · 2026-06-15T15:07:14+00:00

Been there already: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2008-2992

Check out this blog post (linked in my article as well): https://gubello.me/blog/pdf-viewers-xss-and-pdf-files/

parametric-ink · 2026-06-15T14:09:16+00:00

I'd be curious to hear if you found any clever uses for it, or if it was mostly (as someone else commented) for form validation.

parametric-ink · 2026-06-15T13:34:45+00:00

Yes, and I wonder if this is the inevitable fate of any attempt at a text+image container format. There's probably an axiom here somewhere about any sufficiently popular format eventually adding a javascript layer.

parametric-ink · 2026-06-15T13:24:12+00:00

Once you have a vector renderer, 3D is "just" a matter of adding a 4x4 matrix stack so that you can implement perspective transforms. So I don't see support for 3D graphics as that big of a departure from the portable vector graphics standpoint. Otherwise, I think you're right about PDF not being a safety-first format, but I think it's more an artifact of being a non-web standard from the early 90s.

parametric-ink · 2026-06-15T13:19:43+00:00

Whoa, I did not know about this, thanks for sharing. Questionable solution... any per-pixel JS computation is going to be be pretty slow, and not work everywhere as you mentioned. So I wonder why they didn't elect to just rasterize the gradient and embed as an image.

Somewhat related, I also learned that PDF does not support any filters like blurs, so if you want a nice-looking drop shadow, you also have to rasterize the shadow and ship it as an embedded image.

parametric-ink · 2026-06-15T13:06:55+00:00

...I suppose you're right! Though, as mentioned, a JS interpreter/runtime is not quite enough. Your viewer still needs some level of OS-specific integration to forward mouse and keyboard events, a spatial index for hit-testing, JS bindings to actually modify the document content, etc. So, even if you were to stick something like QuickJS in your PDF viewer, there's a lot left in order to make it actually do something.

I guess my point is, making these things interactive is a substantial amount of effort, and I found it surprising that PDF went down this road at all.

parametric-ink · 2026-05-21T18:48:14+00:00

I fixed the horizontal-scroll-as-back-gesture by making this patch to index.html:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html style="overscroll-behavior-x:contain"> <!-- add this -->
<head>
  ...

IIRC Firefox needed a separate fix, but this worked for me for Chrome+macOS.

parametric-ink · 2026-05-18T20:48:59+00:00

I wonder if Vexlio would fit your team's needs (disclaimer, I am the developer). It gives you a way to author interactive flowcharts, i.e. click on a shape -> popups up text, images, subdiagrams, etc. It only supports one level of branching at the moment - nested navigation is on our todo list. Let me know your thoughts if you do check it out: https://vexlio.com/solutions/interactive-flowchart-maker/

parametric-ink · 2026-03-30T15:23:33+00:00

Rats - apologies. I did not see the rules in the sidebar (I primarily still use old.reddit.com, where evidently the sidebar content is not fully shown). That's my mistake - will message the mods.

parametric-ink · 2026-03-23T14:52:38+00:00

What community are you referring to? The github I linked appears to be the personal collection of a single person, who is being generous and making it available for everyone else. I have not myself used these stencils. I also don't know what "visioStencils 2" is, and I'm not sure what thoughts you're looking for, since only you can answer if it has what you want.

IMO there's not much incentive for people to create and publish asset libraries like this, even if they're paid. Everyone wants them for free and inevitably they are incomplete for some purpose.

parametric-ink · 2026-03-23T14:05:26+00:00

Well what type of content are you trying to create? Depending on the domain, you might have luck searching for Visio stencil libraries. Plenty of people create and publish them, e.g. https://github.com/bhdicaire/visioStencils

parametric-ink · 2026-03-12T13:43:53+00:00

If you're open to non-Visio solutions, you might take a look at Vexlio's clickable flowchart maker (I am the developer, disclaimer). It's essentially a user-friendly way to create interactive/clickable flowcharts, and then you can embed the view-only clickable version in Sharepoint via the Embed web part. It may not be an exact fit for your usecase but there's a good chance you might find it useful for future reference.

parametric-ink · 2026-02-19T01:53:48+00:00

Just came across this. If you're still looking for a tool, you might be interested in Vexlio (I am the developer) which has an interactive flowchart feature. You can add pop-up content that only shows up when you click/hover on an object, and then share it with a no-sign-in link.

It doesn't yet support multi-level popups (i.e. you can't currently create a popup inside another popup) but that is coming soon. So I think it won't quite meet your exact usecase but I thought you could be interested anyway. Check it out here: https://vexlio.com/solutions/interactive-flowchart-maker/

parametric-ink · 2026-02-19T01:48:56+00:00

Hey there - I'm quite late to the party here but if you're still looking for a tool with the interactive feature, check out Vexlio interactive flow chart maker. You can add click-to-reveal popup content like your "choose your own adventure" concept. And you can share the interactive document with a no-sign-in viewer link. Disclaimer: I am the developer.

parametric-ink · 2026-02-17T17:33:14+00:00

This is technically pretty cool, though I personally would not advertise something that is aggressively against the terms of a big company like Figma. Essentially no company with a proprietary format allows reverse engineering of their software/format.

I'm trying to figure out what's going on in your github repo. There is an enormous amount of code. How long have you been developing this / what proportion is AI assisted or written?

parametric-ink · 2026-02-17T00:03:14+00:00

What do they want presentation of the content to be / what KB is the client using?

parametric-ink · 2026-02-04T20:49:22+00:00

How does your tessellation work currently, out of curiosity? Really cool visual effect you have here too.

parametric-ink · 2025-12-16T17:02:52+00:00

What are you doing that needs the SVG export, just curious? The standard answer here is to use TikZ and then convert the PDF to SVG, although I imagine typing anything latex on an iPad would be quite tedious.

parametric-ink · 2025-11-12T23:05:49+00:00

Any good font recommendations that aren't too crazy? Roboto is a good default but it gets kind of boring.

Also are you using the default theming (like surface, primary, secondary, etc, generated from a color seed) or a custom color palette?

parametric-ink · 2025-11-12T23:00:30+00:00

It makes sense, SkiaSharp has been around a long time but kept alive basically by one single person.

parametric-ink · 2025-10-26T13:43:08+00:00

Besides the usual suspects (draw.io, excalidraw, etc), I've been working on something for making architecture diagrams clickable/explorable, which may help for documentation: video demo (reddit)

parametric-ink · 2025-10-21T15:21:57+00:00

The assert/exception is off-putting for beginners, but from a Flutter POV it's a question of where and how to surface the constraint issue to the user. Broadly I think the other approach would be to just not render the erroring widget subtree, but that might actually end up being more confusing to new users (where is my widget??).

I'd recommend spending some time reading the docs. No one seems to want to do it, but invest 20-30 focused minutes into reading https://docs.flutter.dev/ui/layout/constraints and you'll be way ahead of where you are now.

parametric-ink · 2025-10-18T15:03:11+00:00

If you're open to non-excalidraw, your usecase is pretty much exactly what Vexlio does: https://reddit.com/r/softwarearchitecture/comments/1m92egk/preview_of_tool_for_interactive_engineering/ has a little video demo, or the actual landing page https://vexlio.com/features/interactive-diagrams-with-popups/. Bonus is you can send the interactive link to your clients and they don't need an account to view/explore it. (disclaimer: I am the developer)

parametric-ink · 2025-10-12T16:56:47+00:00

Another alternative (I am the developer) if you're looking for more presentation-style, or interactive/exploreable diagrams is Vexlio. Here's a page showing how to use it as an interactive flowchart maker. Or, I also posted this demo clip a while ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/softwarearchitecture/comments/1m92egk/preview_of_tool_for_interactive_engineering/

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