KDE To Adopt SVG: Take A Glance

Karma Sucks writes "According to the KSVG website, KDE 3.2 will be adopting SVG in a very real way. A special preview of KSVG is available, showing everything from font rendering to a snowfall simulation using ECMAScript and DOM. KSVG is fully integrated into the KDE framework and can be used as a KPart -- e.g., by applications such as Atlantik."

Comments

Thats not good enough! We need an SVG interface!

[Adolph_Hitler]

The KDE team needs to do more than just adapt SVG as a plugin, they need to render the whole interface via SVG. Maybe cairographics could be used as the backend, and KDE's UI, Icons, Widgets etc could be completely resolution indepedent and rendered via SVG.

Why is SVG important to the desktop?

[stienman]

I suspect a number of people are wondering why SVG is important to the desktop. There is one major reason to have SVG as part of the normal program rendering. Several smaller reasons, too.

Objects can be clearly rendered in SVG regardless of the output device resolution.

We are seeing small 15" laptop screens with resolutions of 1920x1200. Soon we will have desktop monitors with higher and higher resolutions. This is because the profit margin in low resolution LCD monitors is quickly becoming very thin. Manufacturers are going to try and differentiate their products by touting the clarity and color rendition of better, higher resolution screens.

So the operating system designer doesn't have to

1. Create an icon for each resolution
2. Use icon scaling
3. And make many sections of code that will make sure the important things are on screen and usable.

Many applications could and should run well on a PDA (4", 200x320) a cell phone(1.2" 90x90) and a scientific visualization workstation (120", 6400x4000) without device specific code or modes.

The smaller reasons include much less data - if a graphics card rendered SVG, then the connection between the computer and the card could be slow and very long distance. Hard drives space isn't an issue, except in power-conscious embedded areas where smaller graphics files could make a difference.

Lastly, rendering speed improvements could be realized. Aside from dedicated HW doing the rendering, if the OS did it in a trusted manner then it could be faster than many libraries and/or programmer hacks. Programs could as a result be smaller, since they don't have to maintain as much graphics, layout, and UI information.

In short, there are many good reasons to include SVG in the lower system level - mostly looking toward the future of hardware, but when it's here, won't it be nice to be ready?

-Adam

I'm ekstatik

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

kde kan konker kountless desktops with fantastik new applikations like ksvg and kpart, but I really krave for a less krappy naming skeme that kould help even out the wear on my keyboard ...