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SVG And The Free Desktop (s)

Posted by timothy on from the lines-and-rules dept.

unmadindu writes "Christian Schaller has written an interesting article on SVG's current and possible uses on the GNU/Linux desktop. Though the article concentrates mostly on GNOME, it does mention the excellent work the KDE developers have been doing with KSVG, and refers to the upcoming SVG support in Mozilla too."

3 of 337 comments (clear)

  1. Scalable graphics fill a niche by Sexual+Ass+Gerbil · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They're great for displaying technical drawings. I'd like to see more architectual diagrams on the web, both software architecture and the physical type. With bitmapped graphics, web designers are pretty much limited to small low resolution images, dumbing down detail to a marketroid white sheet level. Vector graphics scale very well for diagrams and cad drawings.

  2. SVG is the best thing ever! by scorp1us · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I recently dabbled in SVG for a website. I learned with that and a dash of javascript I could completely replace a java applet with a few kilobytes of code.

    SVG is finding its way into everything, browsers, icons, etc. I forsee a world where SVG is dominant and regular pixel based images are seen as WAV files as in comparison to MIDI.

    As a matter of fact that is a good analogy: MIDI vs WAV. One is intrections on how to draw the other is the final outcome.

    Imagine how many songs you could fit on a CD if it were midi, with human voice parameters. Ignoring the vocals, you'd get thousands of songs on a CD.

    SVG also fixes the pixelation issue, whenyou try to stretch and compress the image. As a matter of fact, do that once with a regualr image and you're working with crap. You can shrink SVG blow it up, and rotate without any kind of distortion.

    It is kind of suprising it took us this long to get a cross-platform standard on how to specify how to draw shapes! But it is a good thing.

    I don't think computers will ever be the same once SVG takes off.

    --
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  3. Vector graphics on the dekstop by pacsman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This could make for some really interesting desktops, if this is what I think it is. Make some interesting graphical effects within icons or as the desktop without dragging the system down. I can see a new type of desktop where the start menu is replaced by an interactive desktop background. Personally, I hate the damn start menu (including the Linux implementations) as an incredibly ineffieicient way to organize menus. But, that's just my opinion- obviously someone has to like it.