Slashdot Mirror
SVG On the Rise
AShocka writes "The W3C has just released
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 and
Mobile Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1
as W3C Recommendations.
W3C Fellow Dean Jackson has an
article, on O'Reilly Network titled
SVG On the Rise,
in reply to Jacek Artymiak's article SWF Is Not Flash (and Other Vectored Thoughts).
Also check out Dean's SVG answer to Powerpoint presentations at Visualising the Semantic Web in SVG."
That should read:
The W3C has just released Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 and Mobile Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 as W3C Recommendations.
SWF - Propietary format, but easy to make via wizards and so forth for the 16 year old web designer in your neighborhood. Flash 5/MX easily warezed which nullifies some cost concerns fro the less scrupulous. Well known.
SVG - Free format, but requires a foreknowledge of XML. Well supported by the mobile industry and some pretty heavy hitters, but not particularily known by the public.
Will both be implemented equally or will one ever edge out the other? Are we really going to have to suffer through Flash for much longer?
It's vector graphics written using XML-ish code and are thus human readable. And plus, the specification is much more "open-source" than Macromedia's SWF file format is. It also has support for mobile devices, and is just so darned pretty.
Scalable Vector Graphics -- since it uses formulas (XML entities, really) for specifying where lines and shapes go instead of specifying location per-pixel, filesize will be small. Don't worry about XML verbosity preventing this, as SVG-files often are compressed.
The availability of libraries as Batik makes SVG-generation flexible and easy. One example: One project I was on concentrated on pulling numbers out of a database and visualising them as a graph. Filling a XML-document with values and applying XSLT we had instant SVG. Upside: Very scalable and interactive (our customer was very fond of "hotspots" on the graph). Downside: Lack of plugins. Fortunately, it was for their intranet.
As to impact, I do hope this catches on. I much prefer coding Java + SVG than Flash, if just for the fact that not having the Flash-plugin doesn't prevent my regular development with SVG.
Flash Player for Linux (Obvious)
Flash Usability (Flazoom!)
SWF Extractor (Windows prgrams that extracts images and mp3 files from a SWF file as separate files)
Unlock SWF (Open up compressed SWF files)
SWiSH (Low cost alternative to Macromedia)
How to Download YouTube Videos
OpenSWF.org has the
documents.
SWF is the file format used by Macromedia Flash to deliver graphics, animation and sound over the Internet. Almost 95% of web users can view SWF content without having to install a new plug-in, and over 300 million people have downloaded the Flash player. Macromedia published the specifications for SWF in April 1998
I have several projects at work right now that use SVG and there are cases where it's wonderful to use. For those interested, I would suggest Apache's Batik project.
The biggest problem I've encountered so far is with Mozilla. Unfortunately, Mozilla's SVG capabilities are non-existant and the current Adobe SVG plugin doesn't work with the brower.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
Looks like Mozilla has a project to supoort SVG The Mozilla SVG Project.
While we are still a long way away from full SVG support, the subset currently implemented is already pretty useable. We have support for all basic shapes including beziers, stroking and filling with opacity and much of the DOM.
The samples at croczilla.com/svg/ should give you a good idea of the features currently implemented.
Big areas where we're still lacking include text, clipping, filters and declarative animations.
I'm a .NET programmer so I personally used the component from this page, which includes a brief introduction on SVGs, however in general SVGs represent the benefits of vector graphics over raster/bitmapped graphics (smaller size, print better, and scale better). It's unfortunate that everyone can only see SVGs as competition to Flash (I see SVGs as competitions to GIFs and PNGs personally), however it should be noted that it is a virtual certainty that Microsoft will include native SVG support in the next Internet Explorer. Overnight SVG will become the premiere vector format despite all the Flash kiddies ranting on about how "open" Flash is (these must be the same people who call Java open).
In other words, if you're looking to create a cartoon on the web with nice tools and full multimedia synchronization then take a look at Flash and its tools today, but if you want to add vector graphics to a corporate intranet and so, definitely look at SVGs. One of the biggest features of SVGs that got me interested in the first place was the ability to completely embed the graphic in the webpage: While this goes against the spirt of HTML, this composite page was a godsend for a site which allowed users to email or download single file (i.e. non-zipped) reports.
I think you mean to say all graphics could be described as vectors, even though not all graphic formats use vectors in their implimentation
Well, kde is massively moving towards svg after kde 3.1 is done. That means most of the new icons are going to be svg, and konqueror is going to support it...
I don't know, but that looks like it might be a good idea.
the flash authoring tool cannot currently export SVG. However, it is possible to render SVG (or at least a subset) within the Flash Player.
For more info see:
http://actionscript-toolbox.com/svgnotes.php
http://www.macromedia.com/desdev/mx/flash/articles /parse_svg.html
also, if you would like to see svg support within the Flash authoring tool, you can request it here. Please be sure to include why you would like it and what it would enabled you to do. mike chambers mesh@macromedia.com
SVG is not intended to do synchronized multimedia. The G in SVG stands for "Graphics". If you want to build an all-out presentation with animation and audio, use SMIL in conjunction with SVG (or whatever you want for the graphics/animation side).
One issue is the only viewer that actually implements all the spec is the Adobe one, which revs infrequently and doesn't work in Mozilla. For development I ended up needing to run IE with the plugin under Wine so I could work on Linux. Performance is also a concern.
So - this time around I'm using the Moz native support, which is pretty good. SVG may never replace Flash (and so what if it doesn't) but there are a whole host of uses for vector graphics outside animations on the web.
In theory, it is a good idea, but it is only "widely accepted" (pronounced: "anticipated") by programmers who have been talking trash about Flash usability and want to play with vector art without losing face.
SVG has wide usability and even popularity in tasks far beyond Flash's ability. For instance SVG is the standard display format for geographical applications. SVG is used for some scalable KDE icons. SVG can be natively produced using open source software on open source operating systems. SVG is going to be embedded in the next generation of cell phones. SVG is going to be embedded in upcoming printers as a page description language. It is possible to print to SVG as you might print to Postscript or PDF. It is also possible to directly render PDF to SVG. And you will soon be able to output Visio diagrams as SVG. I've even heard of an SVG front-end for NetHack.
The point is that SVG can achieve popularity much greater than Flash's without displacing a single Flash animation. And once it has done that, it will be a small additional step to wipe Macromedia's proprietary, binary crap off of the face of the earth. ;)
By all means, use Flash for the time being. It is the best tool for many jobs. But don't think that SVG is a "theory." It is used by thousands of people in practice, in both commercial and open source projects. There are many businesses dedicated to building SVG tools, and whole industries being re-imagined around SVG. Its recent growth curve is amazing and I'm convinced it will be remembered as being as important as other major W3C specs such as XML and HTML before it.
No, because Flash is the program necessary to read that SWF file.
Version 4 of Adobe SVG Viewer (renamed Adobe Image Viewer) also supports synchronization of video elements. Unfortunately Adobe Image Viewer only supports viewing SVG files that are embedded in Acrobat PDF files.
As someone who is a regular on SVG lists for the past 7 months or so (not very long), I have already come across SVG book authors, W3C members, and Macromedia employees, and good ol' developers all having the very same debate that know the technology much better. And, surprise(!), no side has given up and said "Oh, you're right, lets start developing only with X." If you checked a 2 page SVG vs Flash demo and reposted some generic "SVG doesn't have as many authoring tools", although valid, it's a lot deeper than that. SVG is XML. A real W3C standard. Anyone can make their own client, and hopefully get around cross platform issues like HTML browsers. Which shouldn't be too bad, an SVG plugin is less of a commitment than your whole browser, and bad XML is just that, hopefully no "close enough" rendering. You can create SVG with XSLT or through any server side scripts that can output plaintext.
n t_replay.html
Here are some great places for SVG demos:
Pinkjuice/svg
KevLinDev
Adobe SVG zone
And here are some SVG examples more "in the wild", which are usually mapping or graphing:
http://www.netency.com/netenmap/index.php?p=demos
http://www.oaklandtracks.com/noise/noise_manageme
Anyway, educate yourself and see where SVG can be applied. Good luck.
You might be on to something there. From ldd:
/usr/lib/libgtk-1.2.so.0 (0x40246000)
mozilla/mozilla-bin:
[...]
libgtk-1.2.so.0 =>
GTK is certainly LGPL also!!!! What exactly is the problem here again?
Every time Flash comes up in a Slashdot thread, there's always some poster who hasn't heard of Flash MX saying "It doesn't support search engines, Unicode, accessibility, or the back button." The MX version has been out about a year now -- isn't it time to update your talking points?
"It doesn't degrade if you browser isn't able to support it." And that browser would be -- what, Lynx? Which also lacks SVG support, and always will.
As for "the majority of the Web browsing public," that's a very mild way of saying that the Flash plug-in is (according to Macromedia) the most pervasive software in the world, with over half a billion users. Given that Flash MX has strong XML support, and that it's now targeting "rich Internet applications" instead of ordinary vector animation, SVG has a long uphill battle ahead.
what's to stop an author from viewing the SVG source and doing a cut-and-paste of the library into his own projects?
Title 17, United States Code.
The Berne Convention.
What else do you need?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Last time I built Amaya it only weighed in at several megs itself -- and it's a browser, WYSIWYHYGOOB (What You See Is What You Hope You Get On Other Browsers) XHTML editor, and to the best of my knowledge, fully supports SVG and MathML (which although unrelated, is nice if you don't have LaTeX2HTML or HeVeA handy).
unixkb.com -- articles on practical Unix issues.
I feel developers should always try to be as aware as possible about the technologies they use, without bias. Sometimes a client may request something be done in Flash, other clients may require that everything be as XML conformant as possible. Whatever the request, the developer needs to be aware of the pluses and minuses of each, and inform the client where need be. Flash has it's place, especially as Macromedia is putting in effort with MX to get it to address accessibility issues.
There is another possible advantage to SVG, being XML compliant, that I have not seen addressed here, and that is SVG media/documents can be formatted on the fly, using XSLT for various media. CSS addresses media types for (I know the support for all is not there yet, but it is getting there)
I saw Dean Jackson's presentation at the OzeWAI 2002 Conference. From what I could see, he was using Mac OSX, and Python XSLT tools to produce his PowerPoint like SVG slides. In this format, one should be able to configure completely different behaviour, look and feels for any of the desired end media formats. Without a file format based in structured markup, this becomes much more difficult to address. For this purpose, this is far more flexible.
I do feel that as/if SVG is eventually built into browsers natively, there will need to be some user configurability to control the behaviour of the SVG, (and other media) in the browser. If there are animations the user needs to be able to easily turn them off (if they want too), or allow the user to turn them off by default. Users obviously want this type of control as each user is different, some may love animated web pages, others may not. SVG and user-agents need to be easily configurable and controllable. This should be pretty obvious given Mozilla's and Opera's preferences to allow the user to manage the DOM, and the market in Popup blockers for IE that manage the DOM and http refreshes and the like.
As a side note, I really do not think the W3C is trying to box in/out developers. I try to follow most of the discussion groups associated with Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). I can see how it would be easy to form the mistaken opinion that this bunch of people basically want a web driven by Lynx (or some really bland HTML). I ask those of you here that find the process of the W3C draconian, to just follow any of the active W3C discussion lists. I find a community of people that, for one have taught me a lot about how to work as a collaboration of people with different views and agendas, that are working with everyone to try and find a way to present the web in the most universal and open standards. There is often very healthy debate, and many people trying and working very hard not to limit the standards. The W3C is not the Web Police, it's just a standards body trying to build an equitable, accessible web (Maybe I'm really naive).
Admittedly they do not do such a good job of marketing themselves and educating developers, but it is a democratic process, if you really don't like something and feel you have better solutions, or can improve, or help, join a working group and help improve the web.
If you do follow a discussion list for a few months, and do not find what I stated, well.. you can email me a tell me what a flamin idiot I am (you may not be far wrong).