Re:SWF is not a proprietary format.
on
SVG On the Rise
·
· Score: 1
The only way to figure out which interpretation if normative is to take the contract in front of a real judge as part of a court case. I personally have better things to do. I think that my interpretation would win out but either way no corporation I have ever worked for has been risk-tolerant enough to look at a license, admit that there are two plausible readings of it and start developing based on their hope that their reading is the correct one. Furthemore, even according to your interpretation, it is impossible to make an app that ONLY inputs and does not output Flash...i.e. a competitor to FlashMX. Yes, you could probably play semantic games to get around that but I'll come back to my point that your games will only be verified as legitimate once you are in front of the judge and by that time you've already wasted a bunch of money on lawyers. And anyhow, most judges are smart enough to see when you're playing games to get around a license.
Re:SWF is not a proprietary format.
on
SVG On the Rise
·
· Score: 1
The license says that you can use the specification ONLY for the production of software that outputs SWF: you are granted a nonexclusive license to use the Specification for the sole purposes of developing Products that output SWF.
Sole purpose. No other purpose. I.e., not for the purpose of import or viewing. Why would they use the words "sole purpose" if they intended to leave other options open? why would they use the word "output" without mentioning "input???"
I've certainly considered it! But I think that today's SVF implementations are too immature for that. They aren't optimized enough for performance. But I've heard rumours that one or both of Apple and Microsoft are thinking about this. Microsoft has just released their first SVG application (Visio SVG import/export),Apple's new Keynote format is obviouisly SVG-influenced and the OS desktop playes are using SVG for icons, so the right companies are starting to think about SVG. I believe it is only a matter of time.
Re:SWF is not a proprietary format.
on
SVG On the Rise
·
· Score: 1
The license does place some restrictions on the contents of any SWF files produced (must not have errors, must be playable on latest player, etc.); but I don't see anywhere that it states that other file formats can't be output, nor do I see anywhere that it states that competing products cannot be created.
The license says: You aren't allowed to use specification to create applications that do NOT output SWF: i.e. other players. Don't you think that if they wanted to allow products that either "import" or "output" SWF they would have said so? They didn't, so they didn't mean that.
Sure. But I still don't see much point in comparing FLASH and SVG.
It is true that pundits tend to focus on this when it is not the biggest deal.
SVG is just a graphics format. It is closer to PDF than it is to FLASH. SVG+DHTML will not replace FLASh though, simply because DHTML sucks.
There is no such standard as DHTML. The standards that can work together to replace Flash (and do much more than Flash can!) are SVG, SMIL and ECMAScript. Of course you can also mix in XHTML, XSLT, XForms and other XML vocabulary but that takes the mix far beyond Flash.
90% of your work will go towards work-arounds, and it will still be slow, unstable, and disfunctional.
Javascript implementations are converging on the ECMAscript standard. But let's presume that this was not the case. What you are saying is: "standards can be implemented in a non-standard way and this causes problems." But think about that, who is implementing the standards in a non-standard way? Mostly Microsoft. Why? Because they want to kill standards because interoperability promotes competition. You're making Microsoft's argument for them. And Macromedia is deep in bed with them also. For your own protection you should be criticing the source of the bad "dHTML" implementations (Microsoft) rather than the standards that are being abused.
I do not like FLASH because of the software. They also just raised the price believing they can pull an Adobe on the market.
In the absence of standards you are at the whim of the monopoly vendor.
But I have stronger doubts when it comes to these so called web standards. They are just adding to the heap of spagetti-bloat-ware.
Quite the opposite. Whereas proprietary standards like PDF, Flash and VML share _nothing_ in syntax or semantics, XHTML, XForms and SVG share a lot of syntax and concepts which allows implementations to be smaller and less bloated. If we just cede the Web to proprietary vendors, the whole thing will become nightmarishly bloated because the bits from Microsoft won't be integrated with the bits from Macromedia which won't be integrated with the bits from Adobe. etc.
And it is going to be quite some time before SVG reaches critical mass. FLASH already has. And FLASH will let you do more, more reliably. That is what FLASH developers pay for.
It is not correct to say that Flash is "more popular" or "more reliable" without addressing the audience and market. Among cartographers, SVG is more popular. SVG either already is or soon will be more popular among scientists. SVG is already more popular as an interchange format between graphics programs and as a visualization for XML-based data. SVG already ships with chipsets for mobile phones and will probably soon ship with the phones built on top of those chipsets. Flash is more popular and reliable for public applications on the public Internet. Yes. But SVG can become more popular than Flash -- in total -- without even touching that particular application. But of course there will be a day where SVG and Flash compete head to head and it will be the young Turk versus the established veteran. Irresistable force versus unmovable object.
I believe SVG will win based on the fact that it has superior technology, it is better integrated with Web standards and XML, it is standardized and backed by more companies (e.g. Adobe, Corel, Canon, Nokia, to a certain extent Microsoft) and based in large part on the fact that Flash has failed to live up to the promise of vector graphics. Most vector graphics on the Web are NOT Flash: they are GIF/PNG. That's a very sad fact and if Flash was going to solve the problem it probably would have done so already. SVG is the solution. Handling the 10% of vector graphics that is in Flash is a small side-task compared to the main one of banishing GIFs of words, lines, circles etc.
I am sure you've seen enough bad FLASH to make you sick of it, but just wait til you see the bad SVG.
I'm not concerned about the quality of the work produced. I'm concerned about the quality of the technologies themselves. Flash is poorly integrated with Web architecture and it would need a complete architectural overhaul to fit better. (XML syntax, gzip compression, embeddable in XHTML, open license, support for style sheets, etc.)
There are Flash players for various models of cellphones and PDAs already, and more in the works.
The devices that Flash is deployed upon (e.g. Nokia's 9210 Communicator, soon) are much more hefty than the ones SVGt is being optimized for (e.g. Nokia's 3650 and 7650). Furthermore, SVG is being sold with the platform, such as TI's OMAP chipset platform. That chipset has a huge percentage of the cell phone market.
And Flash MX supports what Macromedia calls "assistive technologies functionality."
Nevertheless, SVG's markup-based, HTML-integrated syntax is much better optimized for accessibility.
Flash's licensing model is inherently anti-accessibility because it does not allow the creation of competitive "viewers" including viewers optimized for blind people. SVG is not so-encumbered.
Seems to me a Web page designer who can embed alternate XHTML code would find it trivial to implement a Javascript or other server-side check for the presence of the Flash client, then "degrade" to static pages as needed.
Those are the kinds of hacks that make the Web much less easy to index, download and otherwise manipulate. Scripting is a fallback, to be reserved for exceptional tasks.
Even if SVG becomes a widespread standard, I could imagine a lot of pages checking for Flash first, then "degrading" to SVG -- because Flash files are compressed binaries, far smaller than the equivalent SVG.
SVG files can also be compressed binaries. GZIP compression is a required part of the specification. That's the better way to do binary compression because almost every language and platform has a gzip implementation.And because they use mathematical animation rather than frame-based animations, they will often be smaller than Flash files. Try again!
To me, the issues are clear. Flash has a much better existing toolbase and a much larger deployed audience. SVG has a much stronger technical architecture and is achieving rapid uptake in all sorts of verticals. It will take years for SVG to seriously challenge Flash. But when it does, SVG will win because its technology is so much stronger and it is a true standard which already has literally hundreds of cooperating tool implementations for every language, platform and application and will have thousands in the not-too-distant future.
SVG is for vector graphics. If you haven't noticed, FLASH is much more than that.
The point is that SVG is the last important piece of the suite of Web standards that will make Flash redundant. Javscript replaces Actionscript. SMIL replaces Flash animation. And finally, SVG replaces Flash vector graphics.
And FLASH will always be popular for dynamic graphics and interactive content.
Here's a hint no technology will "always" be popular. Technology evolves. If you're in the "Flash business" then you owe it to yourself to ask what will eventually replace Flash. If it isn't SVG then it will be something else.
Re:SVG not (yet?) for presentation
on
SVG On the Rise
·
· Score: 1
i thought one of the advantages of svg was that it was open, and didnt rely on proprietary / closed technologies? last i checked both the adobe and corel players were both closed / proprietary programs.
SVG is a specification. There are open source and closed source implementations of the specification. That's the virtue of having a standard. You can choose to use the product that has the licensing that you agree with. Proprietary products do not give you that freedom.
of course, you could just write your own player, but then everyone has to worry about yet another implimentation, and its quirks and problems, leading to lowest common denominator programing, which is generally a pain.
Why would you write your own player rather than working with librSVG and Mozilla SVG?
Okay then, you give ME some links as I gave. Show me KDE icons in Flash (as I showed KDE icons in SVG). Show me Flash being used as a page description language by a major printer manufacturer. Show me someone rendering PDF to Flash. Show me a tool for doing "Print to Flash". Show me Web phone standards like 3GPP which require Flash. Show me an open source Flash editor for Linux. etc.
Re:Please take my advice
on
SVG On the Rise
·
· Score: 4, Informative
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 dedicatedtobuildingSVGtools, 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.
Re:SVG not (yet?) for presentation
on
SVG On the Rise
·
· Score: 1
I took a quick look at SVG for a proposal.
It required animation with syncronized audio narration so SVG wasn't a possibility.
Perhaps not with the implementation you had available, but SVG was always meant to be used with the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) which can certainly handle syncronized audio narration.
I still don't see that SVG supports this and can't imagine SVG to be even remotely as useful as SWF in the realm of multi-media presentation. Sure it makes sense in more technical applications like mapping or calculated interactive diagrams, but I don't fear we'll be subjected to a rash of slow-loading SVG page banners any time soon. Bit of a shame, actually.
If this is your only complaint with SVG then you don't really have a complaint with SVG. Tell Adobe, Corel and the other implementors that you want more of SMIL implemented. You also have the option of using Javascript to generate sound, of course...
Independently wealthy? Nope. I'm a well-paid computer programmer and architect. I also hire other programmers so I know that the reason that it was easy to find a job two years ago and hard to find a job now has nothing to do with outsourcing and everything to do with the fact that big companies have frozen their IT budgets whereas two years ago they were spending like drunken sailors.
The bubble that burst was the MOTHER of all bubbles.
Of course. We always live in exceptional times. Our bubble is always the biggest. Our problems are always the worst. Life will never be the same again.
We will never see again a transfer of wealth from the upper class back to the middle class.
There was no transfer of wealth. The poor made a little progres, the middle class did well and the upper class made out like bandits. Life isn't a zero sum game. Everyone can and did profit (but not in the same proportion!). Now that things have turned negative, we will all suffer, but of course the minimum wage single mother suffers much more than the CEOs who have to sell their cottages in Colorado.
We will never see good hard working people feeling safe in their jobs again.
Of course not. The world is only going to get worse from here on out. The end is nigh.
You must read BusinessWeek with all their cheerleaders to believe the bullshit you spew.
Low unemployment sounds great at first, then you start noticing how many 'Hey, I used to be a programmer' comments you get from Wal-Mart employees when you wear your geek T-shirt there.
Two years ago it was the opposite. "Hey, a month agao I worked at Walmart. Now I'm a programmer." That's what happens when you have a bubble and THIS is what happens when the bubble bursts. There will be another bubble, and nobody will mind that the Indians are helping us produce software faster, better and cheaper. Then there will be another burst and everyone will blame the Indians for taking our jobs.
Unemployment and underemployment are two different things. Wages are DECREASING right now. This is called deflation. Deflation is BAD.
You've confused so many things it isn't funny. Underemployment has nothing to do with decreasing wages and decreasing wages is NOT deflation. Decreasing _prices_ is deflation. And no, there is no indication that the American economy is deflating although that may happen soon. Nobody knows.
Yes, unemployment went down during the 90s. One BIG factor in this is the fact that we incarcerated all kinds of "criminals" who would be out on the streets in other countries (pot dealers, etc) presumably unemployed.
Oh, I see. So the computer jobs went to India and pot dealers went to jail and computer programmers were selling pot and thus not reflected in the unemployment numbers?
Stop believing everything your Econ teacher teaches you.
I've never had an econ teacher. What I know about economics is self-taught. But it doesn't take a brain surgeon to read the numbers. And the numbers were totally reflected on the street. Thousands of jobs were being shipped to India in the late 90s and it was _impossible_ to find a decent programmer who would accept less than a huge salary. According to your "they take our jobs" analysis, the programmer's salaries should have been dropping but they kept going up until the bubble popped.
He's never had to REALLY look for a job in an industry where there are people who are more than willing to do your job for 1/10 what it takes to survive here.
You're living out the downside of the bubble. It has nothing to do with cheaper Indian workers. When there is another state-side bubble programmers will be impossible to find or hire again. And when it pops, a bunch of them will be thrown out of work. Surprise! So goes the cycle. There is no use blaming foreigners.
Globalization = cheap shirts, fewer jobs, and a fast-paced race to the bottom.
This would be a more impressive pronouncement if it were backed up with facts. But as globalization picked up steam in the 1990s, the unemployment rate dropped. In fact, surprisingly enough, the US unemployment rate pretty much mirrors the highs and lows of the US economy (driven by such factors as tax rates and consumer confidence) and has little to do with the success or failure of companies in Asia. Those are the facts as demonstrated by history.
I hope for a speedy incorporation of this wonderful technology, but I prepare for the typical halts to progress that corporations often impose.
Don't let the facts intrude on your paranoia. Corporations don't "halt progress." They can't. IBM could not stop the PC (but they could and did join in). Microsoft could not stop the Internet (but they could and did join in). The horse-carriage people couldn't stop the trains, the train-people couldn't stop the cars, the car-people couldn't prevent the invention of planes, etc.
On the flip side, though, I've made great progress deconstructing the files and have got a decently-workable tool for one client already. But it'd be much nicer if something were written out. Thinking is hard work.
Of course: documentation is good. The lack of documentation sucks. But your admitted progress refutes the idea that "XML doesn't make any difference." I defy you to make as much progress starting from the PowerPoint binary file format. You say that they're marketing a small piece of the puzzle but I think that it is demonstrably a pretty large part of it and YOU'RE the proof!
The second the keynote ended, I got calls from any of the Mac-user clients I've ever had asking me if I could write them tools to connect their various systems to their Keynote presentations. "Ummm, yeah..." is all I can say, though that answer can also apply to "can you make a full scale model of a porcupine out of toothpicks?"
Dude. Take a look at the file format. It is simple. Plus it borrows heavily from SVG (for paths and transforms). SVG is an openly documented standards. (too bad Keynote didn't use SVG rather than borrowing from it!) If you really don't see that that's easier to reverse engineer than the PowerPoint file format then you don't have much experience in reverse engineering.
I mean look at. It has an element called "master-slides." I wonder what that means. It has elements called shadow-style. dash-style. fill. I wonder what those mean? Just use your common sense and you can figure out 90% of it without even stretching your brain.
Look. When is it going to get through people's heads that just because data has an XML representation it means you can instantly decipher the contents of the data? XML is a data format, that's all. Without a well-defined semantics it is no easier reverse-engineer XML than it is to reverse engineer a binary format.
I'm sorry, that's pure bullshit. There are two parts to reverse-engineering a file format. Reverse-engineering the syntax and reverse-engineering the semantics. Well-designed XML allows you to outsource the syntax part of the problem. Depending on the file format that could be most of the problem, a tiny fraction of the problem or close to half of the problem. I know this based on my personal experience but also based on the fact that I am friends with a guy who spends most days reverse engineering file formats and doing conversions for big companies.
Socialism asserts the rights of individuals over corporations, as opposed to capitalism, which asserts the rights of corporations over individuals.
You are quite incorrect. Those definitions are just pulled out of your ass. Use a real source. Here's what dictionary.com has to say:
capitalism
n : an economic system based on private ownership of capital [syn: capitalist economy] [ant: socialism]
socialism
n 1: a political theory advocating state ownership of industry 2: an economic system based on state ownership of capital [syn: socialist economy] [ant: capitalism]
Socialism asserts the rights of the state to control the livlihoods of individuals. Capitalism asserts the rights of individuals to self-organize into corporations, partnerships, or one-man businesses according to their own wishes.
Now there have been more than one instance of oppressive regimes operating under the guise of socialism that the world would probably have been better off without. North Korea, for example. But then there are a lot of instances of oppressive regimes operating under the guise of capitalism that the world would probably have been better off without. The US, for example.
And which country would you rather live in? Which country is increasing their production of Nukes. Which is decreasing? Which country has millions of troops menacing its peaceful neighbour. Which country has a military of volunteers. Which has millions of conscripts. Which has starved its people? State ownership of the means of production will inevitably lead to the problems of North Korea. Read Hayek.
Ignoring these real-world examples, and focusing on ideals, socialism wins hands-down to capitalism, except if you are a corporation, or a rich bastard who has clawed his way to the top of the corporate world.
How's that for ad hominem? Actually there are people who've thought through the issues and come to the conclusion that capitalism is better because it preserves people's right to self-organize.
Socialism elevates the ideal of egalitarianism above freedom or efficiency. Capitalism elevates the ideal of freedom over egalitanarianism and not coincidentally also improves efficiency. You need to read Hayek, you sound like you've got a fifteen-year old's understanding of the issues. "Poverty sucks. Therefore capitalism sucks."
Socialism has been tried. Over and over again. It always devolves into dictatorship just as Hayek predicted. No surprise!
Slashdot Mirror
The only way to figure out which interpretation if normative is to take the contract in front of a real judge as part of a court case. I personally have better things to do. I think that my interpretation would win out but either way no corporation I have ever worked for has been risk-tolerant enough to look at a license, admit that there are two plausible readings of it and start developing based on their hope that their reading is the correct one. Furthemore, even according to your interpretation, it is impossible to make an app that ONLY inputs and does not output Flash...i.e. a competitor to FlashMX. Yes, you could probably play semantic games to get around that but I'll come back to my point that your games will only be verified as legitimate once you are in front of the judge and by that time you've already wasted a bunch of money on lawyers. And anyhow, most judges are smart enough to see when you're playing games to get around a license.
Sole purpose. No other purpose. I.e., not for the purpose of import or viewing. Why would they use the words "sole purpose" if they intended to leave other options open? why would they use the word "output" without mentioning "input???"
I've certainly considered it! But I think that today's SVF implementations are too immature for that. They aren't optimized enough for performance. But I've heard rumours that one or both of Apple and Microsoft are thinking about this. Microsoft has just released their first SVG application (Visio SVG import/export),Apple's new Keynote format is obviouisly SVG-influenced and the OS desktop playes are using SVG for icons, so the right companies are starting to think about SVG. I believe it is only a matter of time.
The license does place some restrictions on the contents of any SWF files produced (must not have errors, must be playable on latest player, etc.); but I don't see anywhere that it states that other file formats can't be output, nor do I see anywhere that it states that competing products cannot be created.
The license says: You aren't allowed to use specification to create applications that do NOT output SWF: i.e. other players. Don't you think that if they wanted to allow products that either "import" or "output" SWF they would have said so? They didn't, so they didn't mean that.
Sure. But I still don't see much point in comparing FLASH and SVG.
It is true that pundits tend to focus on this when it is not the biggest deal.
SVG is just a graphics format. It is closer to PDF than it is to FLASH. SVG+DHTML will not replace FLASh though, simply because DHTML sucks.
There is no such standard as DHTML. The standards that can work together to replace Flash (and do much more than Flash can!) are SVG, SMIL and ECMAScript. Of course you can also mix in XHTML, XSLT, XForms and other XML vocabulary but that takes the mix far beyond Flash.
90% of your work will go towards work-arounds, and it will still be slow, unstable, and disfunctional.
Javascript implementations are converging on the ECMAscript standard. But let's presume that this was not the case. What you are saying is: "standards can be implemented in a non-standard way and this causes problems." But think about that, who is implementing the standards in a non-standard way? Mostly Microsoft. Why? Because they want to kill standards because interoperability promotes competition. You're making Microsoft's argument for them. And Macromedia is deep in bed with them also. For your own protection you should be criticing the source of the bad "dHTML" implementations (Microsoft) rather than the standards that are being abused.
I do not like FLASH because of the software. They also just raised the price believing they can pull an Adobe on the market.
In the absence of standards you are at the whim of the monopoly vendor.
But I have stronger doubts when it comes to these so called web standards. They are just adding to the heap of spagetti-bloat-ware.
Quite the opposite. Whereas proprietary standards like PDF, Flash and VML share _nothing_ in syntax or semantics, XHTML, XForms and SVG share a lot of syntax and concepts which allows implementations to be smaller and less bloated. If we just cede the Web to proprietary vendors, the whole thing will become nightmarishly bloated because the bits from Microsoft won't be integrated with the bits from Macromedia which won't be integrated with the bits from Adobe. etc.
And it is going to be quite some time before SVG reaches critical mass. FLASH already has. And FLASH will let you do more, more reliably. That is what FLASH developers pay for.
It is not correct to say that Flash is "more popular" or "more reliable" without addressing the audience and market. Among cartographers, SVG is more popular. SVG either already is or soon will be more popular among scientists. SVG is already more popular as an interchange format between graphics programs and as a visualization for XML-based data. SVG already ships with chipsets for mobile phones and will probably soon ship with the phones built on top of those chipsets. Flash is more popular and reliable for public applications on the public Internet. Yes. But SVG can become more popular than Flash -- in total -- without even touching that particular application. But of course there will be a day where SVG and Flash compete head to head and it will be the young Turk versus the established veteran. Irresistable force versus unmovable object.
I believe SVG will win based on the fact that it has superior technology, it is better integrated with Web standards and XML, it is standardized and backed by more companies (e.g. Adobe, Corel, Canon, Nokia, to a certain extent Microsoft) and based in large part on the fact that Flash has failed to live up to the promise of vector graphics. Most vector graphics on the Web are NOT Flash: they are GIF/PNG. That's a very sad fact and if Flash was going to solve the problem it probably would have done so already. SVG is the solution. Handling the 10% of vector graphics that is in Flash is a small side-task compared to the main one of banishing GIFs of words, lines, circles etc.
I am sure you've seen enough bad FLASH to make you sick of it, but just wait til you see the bad SVG.
I'm not concerned about the quality of the work produced. I'm concerned about the quality of the technologies themselves. Flash is poorly integrated with Web architecture and it would need a complete architectural overhaul to fit better. (XML syntax, gzip compression, embeddable in XHTML, open license, support for style sheets, etc.)
There are Flash players for various models of cellphones and PDAs already, and more in the works.
The devices that Flash is deployed upon (e.g. Nokia's 9210 Communicator, soon) are much more hefty than the ones SVGt is being optimized for (e.g. Nokia's 3650 and 7650). Furthermore, SVG is being sold with the platform, such as TI's OMAP chipset platform. That chipset has a huge percentage of the cell phone market.
And Flash MX supports what Macromedia calls "assistive technologies functionality."
Nevertheless, SVG's markup-based, HTML-integrated syntax is much better optimized for accessibility.
Flash's licensing model is inherently anti-accessibility because it does not allow the creation of competitive "viewers" including viewers optimized for blind people. SVG is not so-encumbered.
Seems to me a Web page designer who can embed alternate XHTML code would find it trivial to implement a Javascript or other server-side check for the presence of the Flash client, then "degrade" to static pages as needed.
Those are the kinds of hacks that make the Web much less easy to index, download and otherwise manipulate. Scripting is a fallback, to be reserved for exceptional tasks.
Even if SVG becomes a widespread standard, I could imagine a lot of pages checking for Flash first, then "degrading" to SVG -- because Flash files are compressed binaries, far smaller than the equivalent SVG.
SVG files can also be compressed binaries. GZIP compression is a required part of the specification. That's the better way to do binary compression because almost every language and platform has a gzip implementation.And because they use mathematical animation rather than frame-based animations, they will often be smaller than Flash files. Try again!
To me, the issues are clear. Flash has a much better existing toolbase and a much larger deployed audience. SVG has a much stronger technical architecture and is achieving rapid uptake in all sorts of verticals. It will take years for SVG to seriously challenge Flash. But when it does, SVG will win because its technology is so much stronger and it is a true standard which already has literally hundreds of cooperating tool implementations for every language, platform and application and will have thousands in the not-too-distant future.
SVG is for vector graphics. If you haven't noticed, FLASH is much more than that.
The point is that SVG is the last important piece of the suite of Web standards that will make Flash redundant. Javscript replaces Actionscript. SMIL replaces Flash animation. And finally, SVG replaces Flash vector graphics.
And FLASH will always be popular for dynamic graphics and interactive content.
Here's a hint no technology will "always" be popular. Technology evolves. If you're in the "Flash business" then you owe it to yourself to ask what will eventually replace Flash. If it isn't SVG then it will be something else.
"It doesn't degrade if you browser isn't able to support it." And that browser would be -- what, Lynx?
Yes, and the browsers in mobile computers. And the browsers that blind people use.
Which also lacks SVG support, and always will.
Doh! That's why the fact that SVG degrades gracefully is important! SVG can have XHTML or GIF alternate code embedded.
The license does not allow the creation of Flash players that compete with Macromedia's, or the creation of tools that read Flash and output something else (like SVG). That's hardly open.
i thought one of the advantages of svg was that it was open, and didnt rely on proprietary / closed technologies? last i checked both the adobe and corel players were both closed / proprietary programs.
SVG is a specification. There are open source and closed source implementations of the specification. That's the virtue of having a standard. You can choose to use the product that has the licensing that you agree with. Proprietary products do not give you that freedom.
of course, you could just write your own player, but then everyone has to worry about yet another implimentation, and its quirks and problems, leading to lowest common denominator programing, which is generally a pain.
Why would you write your own player rather than working with librSVG and Mozilla SVG?
If you pick up unique skills you won't have to compete with $8K a year. I have no idea when the tech economy will pick up.
Okay then, you give ME some links as I gave. Show me KDE icons in Flash (as I showed KDE icons in SVG). Show me Flash being used as a page description language by a major printer manufacturer. Show me someone rendering PDF to Flash. Show me a tool for doing "Print to Flash". Show me Web phone standards like 3GPP which require Flash. Show me an open source Flash editor for Linux. etc.
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.
I took a quick look at SVG for a proposal. It required animation with syncronized audio narration so SVG wasn't a possibility.
Perhaps not with the implementation you had available, but SVG was always meant to be used with the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) which can certainly handle syncronized audio narration.
I still don't see that SVG supports this and can't imagine SVG to be even remotely as useful as SWF in the realm of multi-media presentation. Sure it makes sense in more technical applications like mapping or calculated interactive diagrams, but I don't fear we'll be subjected to a rash of slow-loading SVG page banners any time soon. Bit of a shame, actually.
If this is your only complaint with SVG then you don't really have a complaint with SVG. Tell Adobe, Corel and the other implementors that you want more of SMIL implemented. You also have the option of using Javascript to generate sound, of course...
Independently wealthy? Nope. I'm a well-paid computer programmer and architect. I also hire other programmers so I know that the reason that it was easy to find a job two years ago and hard to find a job now has nothing to do with outsourcing and everything to do with the fact that big companies have frozen their IT budgets whereas two years ago they were spending like drunken sailors.
The bubble that burst was the MOTHER of all bubbles.
Of course. We always live in exceptional times. Our bubble is always the biggest. Our problems are always the worst. Life will never be the same again.
We will never see again a transfer of wealth from the upper class back to the middle class.
There was no transfer of wealth. The poor made a little progres, the middle class did well and the upper class made out like bandits. Life isn't a zero sum game. Everyone can and did profit (but not in the same proportion!). Now that things have turned negative, we will all suffer, but of course the minimum wage single mother suffers much more than the CEOs who have to sell their cottages in Colorado.
We will never see good hard working people feeling safe in their jobs again.
Of course not. The world is only going to get worse from here on out. The end is nigh.
You must read BusinessWeek with all their cheerleaders to believe the bullshit you spew.
Nope. Try again.
Low unemployment sounds great at first, then you start noticing how many 'Hey, I used to be a programmer' comments you get from Wal-Mart employees when you wear your geek T-shirt there.
Two years ago it was the opposite. "Hey, a month agao I worked at Walmart. Now I'm a programmer." That's what happens when you have a bubble and THIS is what happens when the bubble bursts. There will be another bubble, and nobody will mind that the Indians are helping us produce software faster, better and cheaper. Then there will be another burst and everyone will blame the Indians for taking our jobs.
Unemployment and underemployment are two different things. Wages are DECREASING right now. This is called deflation. Deflation is BAD.
You've confused so many things it isn't funny. Underemployment has nothing to do with decreasing wages and decreasing wages is NOT deflation. Decreasing _prices_ is deflation. And no, there is no indication that the American economy is deflating although that may happen soon. Nobody knows.
Yes, unemployment went down during the 90s. One BIG factor in this is the fact that we incarcerated all kinds of "criminals" who would be out on the streets in other countries (pot dealers, etc) presumably unemployed.
Oh, I see. So the computer jobs went to India and pot dealers went to jail and computer programmers were selling pot and thus not reflected in the unemployment numbers?
Stop believing everything your Econ teacher teaches you.
I've never had an econ teacher. What I know about economics is self-taught. But it doesn't take a brain surgeon to read the numbers. And the numbers were totally reflected on the street. Thousands of jobs were being shipped to India in the late 90s and it was _impossible_ to find a decent programmer who would accept less than a huge salary. According to your "they take our jobs" analysis, the programmer's salaries should have been dropping but they kept going up until the bubble popped.
He's never had to REALLY look for a job in an industry where there are people who are more than willing to do your job for 1/10 what it takes to survive here.
You're living out the downside of the bubble. It has nothing to do with cheaper Indian workers. When there is another state-side bubble programmers will be impossible to find or hire again. And when it pops, a bunch of them will be thrown out of work. Surprise! So goes the cycle. There is no use blaming foreigners.
Globalization = cheap shirts, fewer jobs, and a fast-paced race to the bottom.
This would be a more impressive pronouncement if it were backed up with facts. But as globalization picked up steam in the 1990s, the unemployment rate dropped. In fact, surprisingly enough, the US unemployment rate pretty much mirrors the highs and lows of the US economy (driven by such factors as tax rates and consumer confidence) and has little to do with the success or failure of companies in Asia. Those are the facts as demonstrated by history.
Somebody please moderate parent up becuase grandparent is totally nonsensical!
I hope for a speedy incorporation of this wonderful technology, but I prepare for the typical halts to progress that corporations often impose.
Don't let the facts intrude on your paranoia. Corporations don't "halt progress." They can't. IBM could not stop the PC (but they could and did join in). Microsoft could not stop the Internet (but they could and did join in). The horse-carriage people couldn't stop the trains, the train-people couldn't stop the cars, the car-people couldn't prevent the invention of planes, etc.
On the flip side, though, I've made great progress deconstructing the files and have got a decently-workable tool for one client already. But it'd be much nicer if something were written out. Thinking is hard work.
Of course: documentation is good. The lack of documentation sucks. But your admitted progress refutes the idea that "XML doesn't make any difference." I defy you to make as much progress starting from the PowerPoint binary file format. You say that they're marketing a small piece of the puzzle but I think that it is demonstrably a pretty large part of it and YOU'RE the proof!
The second the keynote ended, I got calls from any of the Mac-user clients I've ever had asking me if I could write them tools to connect their various systems to their Keynote presentations. "Ummm, yeah..." is all I can say, though that answer can also apply to "can you make a full scale model of a porcupine out of toothpicks?"
Dude. Take a look at the file format. It is simple. Plus it borrows heavily from SVG (for paths and transforms). SVG is an openly documented standards. (too bad Keynote didn't use SVG rather than borrowing from it!) If you really don't see that that's easier to reverse engineer than the PowerPoint file format then you don't have much experience in reverse engineering.
I mean look at. It has an element called "master-slides." I wonder what that means. It has elements called shadow-style. dash-style. fill. I wonder what those mean? Just use your common sense and you can figure out 90% of it without even stretching your brain.
Look. When is it going to get through people's heads that just because data has an XML representation it means you can instantly decipher the contents of the data? XML is a data format, that's all. Without a well-defined semantics it is no easier reverse-engineer XML than it is to reverse engineer a binary format.
I'm sorry, that's pure bullshit. There are two parts to reverse-engineering a file format. Reverse-engineering the syntax and reverse-engineering the semantics. Well-designed XML allows you to outsource the syntax part of the problem. Depending on the file format that could be most of the problem, a tiny fraction of the problem or close to half of the problem. I know this based on my personal experience but also based on the fact that I am friends with a guy who spends most days reverse engineering file formats and doing conversions for big companies.
Socialism asserts the rights of individuals over corporations, as opposed to capitalism, which asserts the rights of corporations over individuals.
You are quite incorrect. Those definitions are just pulled out of your ass. Use a real source. Here's what dictionary.com has to say:
capitalism n : an economic system based on private ownership of capital [syn: capitalist economy] [ant: socialism]
socialism n 1: a political theory advocating state ownership of industry 2: an economic system based on state ownership of capital [syn: socialist economy] [ant: capitalism]
Socialism asserts the rights of the state to control the livlihoods of individuals. Capitalism asserts the rights of individuals to self-organize into corporations, partnerships, or one-man businesses according to their own wishes.
Now there have been more than one instance of oppressive regimes operating under the guise of socialism that the world would probably have been better off without. North Korea, for example. But then there are a lot of instances of oppressive regimes operating under the guise of capitalism that the world would probably have been better off without. The US, for example.
And which country would you rather live in? Which country is increasing their production of Nukes. Which is decreasing? Which country has millions of troops menacing its peaceful neighbour. Which country has a military of volunteers. Which has millions of conscripts. Which has starved its people? State ownership of the means of production will inevitably lead to the problems of North Korea. Read Hayek.
Ignoring these real-world examples, and focusing on ideals, socialism wins hands-down to capitalism, except if you are a corporation, or a rich bastard who has clawed his way to the top of the corporate world.
How's that for ad hominem? Actually there are people who've thought through the issues and come to the conclusion that capitalism is better because it preserves people's right to self-organize.
Socialism elevates the ideal of egalitarianism above freedom or efficiency. Capitalism elevates the ideal of freedom over egalitanarianism and not coincidentally also improves efficiency. You need to read Hayek, you sound like you've got a fifteen-year old's understanding of the issues. "Poverty sucks. Therefore capitalism sucks."
Socialism has been tried. Over and over again. It always devolves into dictatorship just as Hayek predicted. No surprise!