Help with placing svg exported from illustrator

Hi Daniel,

I now can explain the why behind your question in your inital post. And thank you very much that you noticed the difference with option Responsive enabled or disabled!

In short: width and height statements are done before the viewBox entry with option Responsive unchecked.

InDesign cannot read out the viewBox statement. It relies on the width and height statements when placing the SVG.

Assumption: If only a viewBox statement is there InDesign calculates the size by calculating the size of every object in the SVG code and adds a 0.5 Pt margin around ( or resizes the object to the added overall size ). Don't know why. A bug?

More details:

Just did an artboard in Illustrator, sized 100 x 100 Pt with a rectangle exactly sized 100 x 100 Pt.

Exported it in two ways to SVG:

[1] Option Responsive checked; that was checked by default

The following code was exported:

<svg id="Ebene_1" data-name="Ebene 1" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 100 100"><defs><style>.cls-1{fill:#ffed00;}</style></defs><rect class="cls-1" width="100" height="100"/></svg>

[2] Option Responsive unchecked. The code is different:

<svg id="Ebene_1" data-name="Ebene 1" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="100" height="100" viewBox="0 0 100 100"><defs><style>.cls-1{fill:#ffed00;}</style></defs><rect class="cls-1" width="100" height="100"/></svg>

width and height statements are done before the viewBox entry.

That's exact the same thing I did by editing the code in 2019. I added a width and height statement using a text editor without knowing that unchecking the export option "Responsive" would do the same thing.

For all who are reading this:

If you need exact values when placing an exported SVG on an InDesign page, uncheck option Responsive when exporting to SVG. Or add the width and height statements by editing the SVG code with a text editor.

Do not open the SVG in Illustrator to save it differently. SVG is an endformat, it's not an exchange format!

From my German Adobe Illustrator 2021 version 25.2.3:

As far as I now can tell, this option is already available with previous versions of Illustrator 2020, 2019, 2018. Also with Illustrator 2017 where the option was named "Interactive" ( at least in my German Illustrator ).

Cool. One riddle solved, thanks Daniel!

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

Hi Daniel,

could you show screenshots of your save or export options for SVG with Illustrator where you detect no margins at all when placing with InDesign?

Checked one of my posts from 2019 where I detected some issues with margins:
https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign/now-import-svg-in-indesign/m-p/10717683#M159403

I said back then:

"Illustrator is using viewBox entries. But InDesign will ignore them.

[InDesign] adds always 0.5 Pt on every edge of the placed contents."

I'll have to test in the most recent versions of Illustrator and InDesign if something has changed and the issue is fixed. Or if I simply used the wrong method to export to SVG from Illustrator.

Thanks,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

Hi dw62059930,

how large exactly is the margin you see?

And are you sure that you do not see a small amount of margin when you export the SVG from Illustrator the other way?
From my tests InDesign, not Illustrator!, will add a margin of 1 Pt on all sides of a placed SVG from Illustrator.

You cannot change that directly. To make that perfect you will have to edit the SVG code.

For any tests: What exact version of Illustrator and InDesign are you using?

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

Since you have a workaround already (creating two versions of the SVG, one for InDesign and one for online), it doesn't seem like a serious issue. However, if you want InDesign to change the way it handles SVG, you'll need to submit a Feature Request at the InDesign UserVoice website where it will be seen by product managers and engineers:

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests