title: Is there a way to transform a Raphael paper result to PNG/SVG in any browser (including older IEs)?
body: <p>I've seen a lot of people fighting with this matter, but I can't find a proper solution, nor one that fit my needs.</p>
  
  <p>I'm doing some charts with Raphael, and I basically need to get them as PNG (for export, or later use in a PDF, and some other stuff). For Firefox, Chrome, IE 9, and any other browser with SVG support is easy. There are actually two ways to achieve it: using canvg to render the SVG into a canvas element and then obtain the image data; or sending the SVG to the server (C#) and using a library to rasterize it.</p>
  
  <p>The problem is, of course, IE 8 and 7. In these browsers, Raphael outputs VML, and there is no way apparently of getting the SVG source. I couldn't find any VML rasterizer, so it lets me one only solution: to translate the VML to SVG, or to redraw the paper in SVG.</p>
  
  <p>I checked the vectorconvert library por PHP, that actually uses XSLT transformations to translate VML to SVG, but I couldn't make it work (I've tried several tools to test the XSL but neither seem to work).</p>
  
  <p>I tried to force Raphael to output SVG to a hidden div, by changing its properties <code>.type</code>, <code>.svg</code>, and <code>.vml</code> properly, but that didn't work either.</p>
  
  <p>I think there might be a way to write the SVG tree into a hidden DIV while in IE; despite the fact it won't be shown by the browser, the text should be there.</p>
  
  <p>Does anyone knows a way to achieve it? Thanks!</p>