plot SVG within matplotlib figure (embedded in wxPython)

Question

I am trying to embed a SVG image within a matplotlib subplot.

matplotlib can only read PNGs natively, but if PIL is installed, it will use it to load the image and return an array (if possible) which can be used with imshow(). http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/api/pyplot_api.html

import Image     
filename = "/tmp/figure.svg"
pil_img = Image.open(filename) # PIL image
img = np.asarray(pil_img) # converting PIL image into numpy array
self.axes.cla()
self.axes.imshow(img)

But of course PIL does not support SVG. The error:

File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/PIL/Image.py", line 1980, in open

raise IOError("cannot identify image file")

IOError: cannot identify image file

How can I rasterize the SVG file to plot using imshow or directly plot the vectors using matplotlib?

Thanks.

Answer 1

I also had the same problem but now implemented a solution in my package pylustrator: https://pylustrator.readthedocs.io/en/latest/composing.html#svg-files

It can read and parse svg files and creates matplotlib artists to display the svg content in the figure.

Not all svg feature can be emulated by matplotlib artists, so e.g. gradients or filters will not be displayed, but the majority of svg features are supported.