Subsection: Image export

You can print the current graph pressing the Print button. The print options can be selected in a platform-dependent print dialog. Some general options such as paper format can be specified in the page setup window which is activated by selecting the Pape Setup item in the Graph menu of the GraphViewer.

Please note: If you choose a Postscript printer in the print dialog (e.g. Apple Laserwriter), you can use the Print into file option to create a Postscript version of the displayed corpus graph. The created Postscript file may be used by applications such as LaTeX. Please note that the quality of the Postscript output depends on the selected printer and its parameters.

You can save the current graph to several image formats (SVG, JPG, PNG, TIF, and PDF) using either the Export as image item of the context menu (activated by pressing the right mouse button), or the Export image icon (cf. picture icon) of the toolbar, or the Export image item in the Graph menu. A dialog window pops up, and you can select the options you prefer for saving the current graph (cf. screenshot).

The export is based on the SVG format which is an XML-based vector graphics format. In contrast to binary formats such as JPG format, images encoded using SVG can be manipulated (e.g. scaled) without loss of quality. Thus, you can change a token or a syntactic category within the exported SVG file. If you selected an non-SVG image, first an SVG representation is generated and afterwards converted into the preferred format.

The SVG output has been designed in such a way that the different node types (inner/outer node, matching node, imploded node etc.) can be identified by additional XML attributes. Thus, this information can be used to modify the generated SVG image, e.g. by Cascading Stylesheets (CSS).

The image filters you can choose (cf. screenshot above) are realized by inserting predefined CSS stylesheets into the SVG document. In subsection 10.1 we explain how to add your own image filter to the SVG export.

Please note: Relative paths used to specify the export file are evaluated with regard to the working directory.

If you like other users to have a look at your favourite matches, you may want to export the matches in a format that does not depend on the TIGERSearch software suite. Of course, you might export all the matching corpus graphs as single images, but this solution would not be practical.

As an alternative, you can use the Export match forest option to export all matching corpus graphs to one single SVG file. The individual graphs are combined by SVG animations. Thus, you can use any SVG viewer to navigate through the match forest. Please note that the SVG viewer has to support SVG animations.

You can open the Match forest export window by pressing the Export match forest button (cf. forest icon) in the button toolbar or selecting the Export forest as SVG item in the Graph menu. Now you can specify the following parameters:

Parameter: SVG file name

You can either generate an uncompressed SVG file (*.svg) or a compressed SVG file (*.svgz). Relative paths are evaluated with regard to the working directory. Compression reduces the size of the file to about 10% of its original size.

Parameter: match selection

You can restrict the export of all matching corpus graphs to a range of matching graphs, or specify them in a text field (e.g. 1-3;6-7). Note that you have to specify the number (or position) within the match forest, not the corpus graph ID.

Since a corpus graph can match a query more than once, you might prefer to export a graph as often as it matches the query. In this case please check the box Include all matches within a corpus graph.

Parameter: image includes

All corpus graphs are exported in a canonical form, i.e. as fully expanded graphs including match highlighting and match focussing. You can turn on/off the match highlighting, include/exclude the exact description of the match in the SVG navigation bar, and specify the background color. We recommend you to use transparent; in this case the SVG viewer is responsible for the selection of the background color.

To start the export process just press the Submit button. Please note that the export process cannot be stopped.

A popular SVG viewer is the SVG browser plugin which has been developed by Adobe (cf.

http://www.adobe.com/svg/viewer/install/). This plugin is currently available for the Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh platforms. Using this plugin, you can view an SVG image in the Netscape and Internet Explorer browsers.

If you are interested in integrating SVG images in Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, you should visit the following web page:

http://www.indezine.com/products/powerpoint/. This page comprises a detailed description of the integration process. It also contains interesting general hints to improve your PowerPoint presentations.

7.4 Image export