Slashdot Mirror
WVG : The New Scalable Vector Graphics
jafro_svg writes "While the press has discussed Microsoft's upcoming 'Sparkle' as a potential Flash-killer - the technology arena on which Microsoft's new technology is having the most impact is SVG. SVG (now a W3 standard for 3 yeras) was itself billed as a Flash-killer some years ago, and speculation about how it might be accepted into the mainstream for developers (i.e. incorporated into IE) now seems inevitable -- you see, Sparkle's real name is WVG and is 90% identical to SVG." Jafro_svg also points out this online SVG tutorial.
the real question will be, will it be copyrighted so that only IE / MS can use documents created with it like they are doing with the new word standard.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
you see, Sparkle's real name is WVG and is 90% identical to SVG.
And Microsoft FrontPage and IE support a version of HTML that is 90% identical to W3C-compliant HTML. It's that last 10% that makes me want to throw my forehead through my monitor every day at the office.
Netscape lost out to IE
Apple lost out to Microsoft
AltaVista lost out to Google
WordPerfect lost out to Word
The typewriter lost out to the computer
Quark will eventually lose out to InDesign
In each example, the dominant, familiar, easy-to-use solution was replaced by the upstart.
Saying this 'can't surpass' Flash is so short-sighted and uninsightful it's making my teeth itch.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
Looking at their overview, this looks a lot like their previous answer to SVG - VML.
VML tied into directx. They only mention that you cannot mix GDI and Avalon in the same window because WVG is hardware rendered through Avalon. Also sounds like directx.
The only major change was that in VML it always wanted a namespace defined for it to work - like IE didn't know what to do with a VML file. WVG seems like a different way to display for generic windows applications - not just web.
Looks like microsoft is innovating by repackaging an older product into a discription language that can be called by a standard win32 app. It would be interesting to see an open source toolkit that does the same thing as WVG, but uses open standards and remains cross platform.
Is everyone really missing the point?
'Sparkle' is a vector designed drawing engine for APPLICATIONS inside longhorn, it is NOT being billed as a WEB standard.
'Sparkle' is the transitional replacement of the GDI model of the Windows interface. Moving from a Bitmap model to a true Vector model for the Windows UI.
It has NOTHING to do with SVG, Flash, or Web standards.
If you need to compare it to something, compare it to 'Quartz' - and I don't see people jumping on Apple for replacing SVG or Flash by using the PDF based Quartz engine.
The only reason the 'Sparkle' vector engine of Longhorn is getting buzz in this area is that unlike Quartz, it supports a wide array of animation standards within the vector drawing engine.
So, yes it functions somewhat like Flash of today, but that DOES NOT mean it is meant to replace Flash. Instead, it should be the new OS UI rendering engine that FLASH itself uses to draw FLASH applets in a browser window. (Get it, it is the vector engine under applications and things like Flash will use to render on screen.)
The same for SVG, there is no mention that SVG will not be supported in the new IE of Longhorn, in fact, SVG will probably be supported, but be drawn in the UI by the 'Sparkle' Engine.
This is an application/OS level vector rendering engine with animation, it is not a Web standard, nor does it purport to be.
Please stop with Microsoft is abandoning standards and trying to take over the world because they are moving their OS UI model from bitmap to vector based. That is all, get over it.
Everyone thought it was great stop forward in UI rendering models when Apple did this with Quartz, so how is Microsoft evil in developing their own rendering engine as well?
People who compare SVG to Flash directly are missing the point. The real strength of SVG is not vector graphics (which its pretty good at). The real strength of SVG is that since its an XML-derived schema, all the available tools for dealing with and transcoding XML documents (XSLT, et al) can be used to generate SVG documents. The implications of this are slowly beginning to be understood. Imagine how many XML derivations could use this. Anything from business documents (graphs, etc), to medical records (graphically showing the timeline of a patient's medical operations, for example) can utilize these techniques.
The coolest example I can point you to is this. An XSLT stylesheet is used to transform a chess markup language into a animated SVG image. Beyond cool.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"