SVG 1.1 Becomes W3C Proposed Recomendation

openbear writes "From the w3c web site... W3C is pleased to announce the advancement of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 and Mobile SVG to Proposed Recommendations. Comments are welcome through 20 December. SVG delivers vector graphics, text, and images to the Web in XML. SVG 1.1 separates the SVG language into reusable building blocks. Mobile SVG re-combines them into two profiles optimized for cellphones and pocket computers."

Comments

A what now?

[ejdmoo]

A proposed recommendation for possibility of consideration of partial inclusion...

See also XForms

[leighklotz]

See also W3C XForms, which has just become a Candidate Recommendation (one step before PR). XForms updates HTML forms to be XML-based, and plays well with other standards, adding forms to SVG and other XML applications. There are already about a dozen XForms implementations, ranging from those for hand-held devices to standalone clients and popular browser plug-ins. (And a Bugzilla entry for Mozilla that is entertaining reading, though a link from Slashdot won't work anyway.)

Disclaimer: I am one of the editors of the XForms spec.

Linux implementations

[raju]

The first place I would expect SVG to appear in is the browser. In Mozilla the beta SVG provided by Adobe does not work. Mozilla's own implementation[mozilla.org] is stuck due to licensing issues (LGPL vs MPL). When can we expect a decent one on our beloved platform? Windows users at least a decent one from Adobe.

So is this going to replace Flash?

[bogie]

Flash is the dominant method used for interactive graphics on the web today. Websites, adverts, those little games, all have standardized on Flash. In fact although I wouldn't mind it, I can't picture the internet without Flash anymore.

So my question as a non-developer is can SVG do everything Flash can? I didn't see anything about audio capabilities. Also does anyone think even if it can, are the tools there to make using SVG as good as the tools for making Flash graphics. Lastly is SVG a good working spec that won't be co-opted and ruined by some big company.

Re:So is this going to replace Flash?

[ergo98]

SVG isn't going to replace Flash anymore than Flash is going to replace binary games (i.e. We're not going to play Doom 3 as a Flash game): Each has its place. Having said that, in some situations SVG will supplant Flash were it's a better choice: For instance for charts and graphs the vector graphics capabilities of SVG are absolutely first-rate, and it's unnecessary to resort to a proprietary tool such as Flash when dynamically generated XML will work stunningly. The SVG standard is extremely comprehensive even in its 1.0 form, so I don't see very many ways that it can be coopted by anyone.

Re:So is this going to replace Flash?

[Anonymous Coward]

The big difference between SVG and Flash is that SVG is an open specification, not one which is the property of a big company, Macromedia. Although there's never a guarantee that a big company will ruin its specification (HTML by Microsoft for example), it is not likely. SVG itself doesn't have audio capabilities, but SMIL has. In SVG you can incorporate SMIL to use audio. SVG has also some problems. It's XML, so it's text. This means that it can be quite a lot of data you have to send over the net. Or you can compress it (only zipping method which is supported by the 1.0 recommendation is gzip, this can have change), but then it should be decompressed. After this has been done, it should be parsed by the SVG viewer (like adobe's). Although there's still more support for SVG, there aren't much viewers available for SVG in browsers. Even Adobe's viewer hasn't been updated in a year! But on the longer term I'm sure SVG will be much larger than Flash. Macromedia was keen enough to jump in the hole when there was need for vector graphics. SVG came too late to make it as successfull as Flash instantly. I think the fact that Macromedia owns Flash, while SVG is an open, public standard, will make the difference.

Re:Awesome

[bluFox]

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is XML specification for creating Vector graphics (It can be embeded in html pages)

SVG can be used like flash , and you can use javascript to manipulate the shapes on page.

See batikfor an apache implementation of it and some examples (quite nice ones) , and adobe provides a nice viewer for the svg too..

The good point bt vector graphics is that it is scalable , and sizing of images do not affect the clarity/sharpness of the images

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SVG vs. Flash

[Cheese Cracker]

Here's a great page that compares SVG vs. Flash.

Here's two good reasons why you want to implement SVG instead of Flash:

SVG is a standard, Flash is proprietary.
SVG can be indexed and searched, Flash can't.

Re:SVG vs. Flash

[Khalid]

> Here's one good reason why you'd want to implement Flash instead of SVG: SVG is Slooow.

I am not sure what this really means. This is like saying XML is slow, or better HTML is slow. SVG is a standard, you will have slow, and quick implementations, maybe current implementation have not been really optimised yet, but there is no real reason SVG might be intrinscly slow

Re:SVG vs. Flash

[FooBarWidget]

You mean Flash isn't slow? The Flash plugin it takes 10 to 20 seconds to load, and when it's finally loaded, it hogs 90-100% CPU! And I'm using an Athlon 1.4 Ghz.

SVG + script = Enterprise web app

[wombatmobile]

An SVG document can be UI for enterprise applications integration.

For example, start with this static picture generated from a CAD program.

add some simple polygons and script them to conform with some business logic. Connect to your enterprise applications and databases using various connectors (simulated here) and you get a UI component like this that integrates with HTML.

Click on components to select them.

Ctrl-Click to select a set of components. Move your mouse over the colored components to highlight data in the html table.

Type a number in at the top right [enter] to see if you have enough components available for manufacturing.

This example was coded by hand in a day and a half. Probably could do another one in 3 hours or so now we got the hang of it.

Re:Quick Info

[KeyserDK]

This guy is clueless beyond imagination.. Anyway..

The Xfree86 stuff he is getting riled up about is probably this
While the gnome/gtk stuff is here and here
How he mixed it together is - impressive.

No, SVG is real now

[wombatmobile]

The 1.0 spec has been out for yonks already and there's an active SVG developer community out there.

Adobe has been distributing SVG viewer as part of the Acrobat 5 download for over a year now.

Nobody's waiting for Microsoft to innovate SVG or do their XDocs whatever thing; check these static examples generated from MS apps with SVGmaker: Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Project

For building SVG web applications its true that there aren't comprehensive IDE tools available yet, but that hasn't stopped developers from creating some definitive web apps with simple home grown tools (starting with a text editor since SVG is just XML).

Like this interactive logical diagram

Check this awesome mapping example

And this wonderful airport flight management app.

Re:SVG

[0x0d0a]

It would be even nicer if there were Linux graphic editors that could export SVG...

Like PDF but its XML

[wombatmobile]

SVG is an image format that can faithfully reproduce a document display context, same like PDF but since SVG is XML you can mark it up by hand in a text editor, script it, transform it, integrate it directly with HTML or whatever you like. And no monopoly controls it.

This is a shameless plug but we are only 5 guys working out of a house, not a monopoly... (yet... ho ho ho). In the same way that Acrobat can generate PDF out of anything, SVGmaker can generate SVG out of Windows apps.

These are examples.

Sodipodi

[cyba]

Sodipodi uses SVG as its native file format.