svglite R Package

svglite uses the systemfonts package for font discovery, allowing access to all installed system fonts, including those registered via register_font(), register_variant(), add_fonts(), or require_font(). It correctly encodes non-standard weights and OpenType features (like ligatures) in the style block.

To ensure SVGs look consistent on systems without the specific fonts installed, you can embed webfont @imports. You can use systemfonts::fonts_as_import() to automatically generate these imports, which can optionally embed the font data directly into the file.

The svglite() function provides a graphics device that is faster and produces smaller file sizes than the standard R svg() device. It is particularly useful for dynamically serving SVGs over the web. Unlike svg(), which converts glyphs to polygons, svglite() encodes text as styled <text> elements, preserving editability in vector drawing programs like Inkscape or Illustrator.

library(svglite)

x <- runif(1e3)
y <- runif(1e3)
tmp1 <- tempfile()

svglite(tmp1)
plot(x, y)
dev.off()

You can install the stable version of svglite from CRAN using install.packages(). To install the development version directly from GitHub, use the pak package.

# Stable version from CRAN
install.packages("svglite")

# Development version from GitHub
# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("r-lib/svglite")

Building svglite from source requires the libpng system dependency. You must ensure your R configuration (e.g., ~/.R/Makevars) points to the include and lib folders of libpng.

macOS (arm64) Example:

1. Install libpng via Homebrew:

   brew install libpng

2. Configure ~/.R/Makevars:

   CPPFLAGS += -I/opt/homebrew/include
   LDFLAGS += -L/opt/homebrew/lib

To produce compressed (gzipped) SVG files, provide a file path with a .svgz or .svg.gz extension to the svglite() function. This significantly reduces file size for web delivery.

tmp3 <- tempfile(fileext = ".svgz")
svglite(tmp3)
plot(x, y)
invisible(dev.off())