Export to vector drawable when possible (primarily action bar/tab, and generic icons)

[AndroidDeveloperLB]

because now it's supported on various Android versions.

[romannurik]

that's a good idea, but will take a bunch of new code... i hope to revamp the asset studio at some point, this would be a great feature request for that time

[AndroidDeveloperLB]

You could export to SVG, so that designers could also modify the files easier.

[romannurik]

Explored this; it's basically not feasible to export vectors for any foreground images except clipart. I think it's probably better to use the Android Icon Animator tool.

See also #121 and #123

[AndroidDeveloperLB]

Why not ?
You can already convert SVG files to VectorDrawables, like on Android Studio.
When you create the image files from the selection (not from image files of the user), it uses SVG files too, no?

[romannurik]

Yes it would be possible for clipart, but not custom uploaded images, or text. I'll actually re-open and re-frame the request.

[AndroidDeveloperLB]

Text is not possible only because VectorDrawable doesn't support it (sadly), right?
Just like it doesn't support many other SVG features, like gradients...
But I think you can export to SVG and to VectorDrawable , by converting to paths.

[romannurik]

text isn't possible because we'd need to convert the text to paths, and this isn't possible in the browser AFAIK (you can't extract shapes from a web font).

[AndroidDeveloperLB]

But fonts are by definition vectorized, no? So that no matter how you resize them, they will keep being sharp and nice...
There are even tutorials for this. Here's an example:
http://www.graphic-design-employment.com/adobe-illustrator-how-to-convert.html
Are web fonts different?

[romannurik]

I'm not sure I follow. For a web-based tool to generator vector icons from text that uses a web font, the web-based tool needs to somehow have access to the font's path data. This isn't feasible right now. If you really want a vector drawable where the shape is a letterform from a web font, the best option is to download the font, use it in something like Illustrator or Sketch, convert the type layer to outlines ('expand' in Illustrator), export to SVG, and convert to vector drawables using any one of the popular SVG-to-VD converters (e.g. the Vector Asset Studio in Android Studio, or the Android Icon Animator tool, or something else)

[AndroidDeveloperLB]

It's not possible to get the font's paths? So how does it get drawn? Only by black-box commands of the web browser's engine?

[romannurik]

Yes take a look at imagefield.js if you're interested.