Open Source Duke
One of the fun things Sun did earlier this week was to open source Duke, the Java mascot. But what was made available is files in somewhat bloated binary, and often product specific, formats. For example, wave is available in the original Adobe Illustrator format at a whopping 93K, in the lossy jpg format at 7.4K, and in the png format at 122K.
This can be corrected with open source tools. ImageMagick can convert either the jpg or png into a bitmap. Potrace tools can then be used to first enhance the contrast and then to produce an SVG file.
In other cases, I have used this as a starting point, and reduced the images considerably further. In this case, I’ve opted for some light editing (including adding in two ellipses for color) and the result is a file that just over 20% of the size of the jpg file.
convert Wave.jpg duke.bmp cat duke.bmp | mkbitmap -x -f 8 | potrace -t 5 -s -O 10 -W 75pt > duke.svg