Like you, I'd love to pass a simple minimalist string to a Javascript code to render images client-side. My more recent "Create-a-Lace" does just that, dynamically generating all the .svg images using client-side Javascript. However, I've yet to see browsers correctly render shadows, without which the diagrams lose depth. When that hurdle is overcome, I may well extend this concept to all lacing methods.

In the meantime, I do indeed need to resort to some 600+ individual .png images in order to render each of the 50+ lacing methods with their many variations and multiple numbers of eyelet pairs.