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Kurt Cagle's OpenSVG Keynote
Metaphorically writes "Kurt Cagle has posted a summary of his keynote speech from the SVG Open 2005. Inspiring for an SVG enthusiast, informative for any geek. He covers a lot of ground on XML and the next generation of GUI. It connects a lot of technologies that people might otherwise not totally grasp. If you haven't been following the development of XForms, E4X, SVG and XAML then this is a great way to catch up."
MirrorDot of the Keynote
There's a blog post here with a link to another presentation from the conference.
I was really hoping to read this article and read the hype about xml in plain english.
Looks like I'll have to wait a bit longer.
What is this new technology
SVG? New? Not that is news! SVG 1.1 was ratified on the 14th of January, 2003. Most SVG users either view the files in the Adobe Plugin, or translate to raster images for vector charting and the like. (I actually had a pretty cool 3D pie chart program for awhile there. SVG came out of one end, translated by Batik, then viewed as a PNG.)
why should I care about it
You shouldn't. It's just technology marching on. If you need to do vector graphics, you'll find it far more up-to-date and better supported than PostScript. If you don't need to do Vector graphics (or don't even know what vector graphics ARE) then you definitely don't care.
As a computer expert of 20 years and programmer of 15 years, how will this effect me?
You'll need a new bullet-point on your resume in a few years?
Will I have to learn totally new things, or does it build on the old ones?
You know XML? You know PostScript? How about ECMAScript? Yes? You're good to go then.
Who owns the patents to this new technology?
It's older than the hills technology. I dunno, maybe my great grandmother had a patent at some point, but there are none now. (Unless someone invents a stupid one like "Method for storing Vector graphics in XML." Hmm... maybe it is patented.)
Will Microsoft release their own version of it and crush everyone?
Microsoft Internet Explorer (Exploder in my book) needs the Adobe plugin. AFAIK, Microsoft is mostly ignoring it.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Microsoft already has a full implementation of a similar technology in beta within the Longhorn codebase. The idea of raster independent graphics is nothing new (postscript in 1985 for example), but having the underlying data driving the drawing an XML-based structure is. The real value of these solutions is a simplistic platform and technology neutral abstraction of interface output. The MS naysayers would say that the MS implementation is locked to Microsoft, however that just isn't the case. The speed of change in hardware and software necessitates the simplication of the layer between the OS and hardware.
Practical application:
when (ahem) "someone I know" wanted to make themself a firefox tshirt (ahem) *they* found themself a copy of the logo in svg, scaled it up to a nice tasty tshirty size, printed it out on iron on transfer paper and poof! beautiful tshirt - thanks to svg.
Ahhh I love a happy ending.
and yes, useless w/o pics. Sorry.
Some advantages of SVG:
- For the Web, the browser gets to decide how to render graphical information (so for example, client-side anti-aliasing preferences can be used).
- because the client has access to the high-level description, you could do something like write a browser that knows how to select text from a graphical logo
- Network bandwidth is reduced for many types of graphical data such as logos, emblems, seals, and other types of data that can be described in relatively few drawing commands
- For some values of replacement, it's an open replacement for Flash
- Because it's XML, you can use any old XML parser to gain high-level information about any SVG document.
All things considered, SVG is a darned nice thing, and I would love to be able to start taking full advantage of it in plugins and extensions.If there is a problem with SVG & many other W3C recommendations is that they're getting to be horribly, horrifically difficult to implement and implementing SVG (for example) means implementing a whole bunch of other specs first. Just look how long its taken for Firefox to get semi-decent support (which isn't even in 1.0) and SVG has almost been in development for as long as Mozilla has!
>>> "AFAIK, Microsoft is mostly ignoring it."
....
Well you clearly haven't come across the beta for Acrylic - http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/ - which merges vector graphics (SVG, yee-haw) and raster.
I use Inkscape still as my download of Acrylic didn't even get past the install stage (I'm using Inkscape on Slack and WinXP - if you haven't got the latest install get it now, it's awesome). I've read good things about Acrylic(some whilst stood in my local news agents!).
I'd be prepared to bet that the SVG files produced aren't vanilla
What is so cool about SVG is talked about in this keynote. SVG, is vector graphics AND text, AND placed raster images, AND animation described in an open, easy to read format.
One advantage is that you can design a webpage the same way you design a printed piece. Where you have just as much control over it. MS explorer requires an adobe plugin to display it, similarly to how it displays flash. Firefox is going to display SVG natively in the 1.1 browser (actually already does with the deerpark alphas.
The code is easily visible like HTML. The desktops that use SVG for the gui, I don't know much about, but it's fantastic. Nice icons, or buttons or any visual element that is smaller in file size, breaks out of the square we are used to, and the elements can be enlarged or reduced and still be rendered beautifully.
check out inkscape if you want to experiment with svg, or the open clipart library to see some cool examples. of SVG.
http://inkscape.org/
http://openclipart.org/
Here's what mozilla is doing with SVG:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/svg/
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I am in no way affiliated with this sig.
I am sorry, but it does not seem that the presenters know what they are talking about. .NET and thus Windows :)
Xaml is NOT the same as XUL. It is Microsoft trying to keep everyone using
Also XaMLaN is the exact opposite of true Xaml - it converts C# code to FLASH.
I have programmed in XAML for months, and it really is just another abstraction layer - sort of a way to build applications like a Web AND like a rich GUI
You can do this today with some free frameworks out there - this just has a standard method for managing state and page history for Windows Apps, and also allows more responsive web apps.
Microsoft is also trying to add AJAX for the nice JavaScript drive apps, but it probably will not ship with the Vista.
Mind you - I would still have love to go and see this conference...... To meet the presenters, not to partake of any extra curricular activities in the Netherlands.
Free as in FreeDom
At this point, it is such a monumental task to implement all the intricacies of the full SVG specs that *nobody* - Not Microsoft,Adobe,Apache, Sun,Apple of anyone in the open source arena is able to do it, or even come close, it seems.
u s/matrix.html
Complete implementation? No. But pretty much every feature has been implemented and tested in some implementation as of the end of last year:
http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/Test/20030813/stat
Apps like Inkscape are probably the most advanced SVG showcases, but for some reason everybody wants to write their own browser plugin from scratch instead of starting from the authoring tools and extending them to support a 'playback' mode.
Not to knock the great work Inkscape has done, but it's not the most advanced. I would guess Adobe SVG Viewer is better as a viewer. It's definitely been around longer.
Having a reference implementation from the W3C would be great, sure, but it's not essential. Look at CSS. There are plenty of subtle bugs out there, and everybody loves to rail on the most popular browser not supporting important parts of the spec, but nobody would deny that CSS is useful.
more of the same on Twitter.
Again, SVG is a lot smaller than you think. When you start trying to display very complicated images (like the classic tiger postscript demo), that's where it becomes larger, and that's really not what SVG is best at, and at lower resolutions, I would recommend exporting a bitmap for such applications. For simple logos, stylized text (e.g. anything that's just a bit too much for HTML+CSS), etc, nothing beats SVG for space, flexibility, accessibility, and client-side rendering quality.