W3C Enhances SVG For Rendering Graphics On The Web

By Michael Foley
iApplianceWeb
(05/04/02, 10:29:43 PM EDT)

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has issued Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 and Mobile SVG Profiles as W3C Candidate Recommendations. SVG 1.1 separates SVG capabilities into reusable building blocks, and SVG Mobile re-combines them in a way optimized for mobile devices.

SVG is a language for describing two-dimensional graphics in XML. SVG allows for three types of graphic objects: vector graphic shapes (e.g., paths consisting of straight lines and curves), images and text. Graphical objects can be grouped, styled, transformed and composited into previously rendered objects. Text can be in any XML namespace suitable to the appplication, which enhances searchability and accessibility of the SVG graphics. The feature set includes nested transformations, clipping paths, alpha masks, filter effects, template objects and extensibility.

SVG drawings can be dynamic and interactive. The Document Object Model (DOM) for SVG, which includes the full XML DOM, allows for straightforward and efficient vector graphics animation via scripting. A rich set of event handlers such as onmouseover and onclick can be assigned to any SVG graphical object. Because of its compatibility and leveraging of other Web standards, features like scripting can be done on SVG elements and other XML elements from different namespaces simultaneously within the same Web page.

The graphical capabilities of SVG 1.1 are the same as those of the widely implemented SVG 1.0. What has changed is the way the language is defined. For SVG 1.0, the Document Type Definition (DTD) was a single, monolithic unit. In SVG 1.1, the DTD is divided up into smaller, more flexible functional building blocks that can be reassembled in different ways for different purposes.

Mobile SVG Profiles bring Vector Graphics to Handheld DevicesW3C has used the SVG 1.1 building blocks to make two profiles or subsets of full SVG; SVG Tiny, aimed at multimedia capable cellphones such as the recently announced 3G units, and SVG Basic for handheld and palmtop computers.

Link:
W3C