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Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is an XML markup language for describing two-dimensional vector graphics, both static and animated. It is an open standard created by the World Wide Web Consortium, which is also responsible for (X)HTML. There is some overlap in purpose with Macromedia Flash.
An overview of SVGSVG allows three types of graphic objects:
Graphical objects can be grouped, styled, transformed and composited into previously rendered objects. Text can be in any XML namespace suitable to the application, 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 straightforward and efficient vector graphics animation via ECMAScript or SMIL. 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. Development HistorySVG was developed in a long process after Macromedia and Microsoft introduced VML whereas Adobe Systems and Sun Microsystems submitted a competing format known as PGML. SVG 1.0 became a W3C Recommendation on 2001-09-04. SVG 1.1 became a W3C Recommendation on 2003-01-14. SVG 1.2 is currently a W3C Working Draft. Support for SVG in browsers and other applicationsThe use of SVG on the web is in its infancy. There is a great deal of inertia from the long-time use of completely raster formats, but also browser support is patchy, with users of most browsers having to install a plugin. Web sites which serve SVG images typically also provide the images in a raster format, either automatically by http content negotiation or allowing the user to directly choose the file. Alternative images are usually automatically rasterised using a library such as ImageMagick, which provides a quick but incomplete implementation of SVG or Batik, which implements all of SVG, but is slower. Some wikis have experimented with SVG support; it has been speculated that since SVG is a text-based format, a wiki might allow edits to SVG images in a fashion similar to editing an standard article. However, the benefits of editing images in this way are disputed, it is generally considered that even trivial editing is better achieved using a separate graphics package because it is difficult to visualise exactly how changes to the XML will appear on the final image. Current wikis mostly do not support either the display or editing of SVG images, partly because of the lack of full browser support, but also becuase rasterisation using Batik is CPU-intensive and requires Sun's Java Runtime Environment, which is not free (as in freedom). Plugin supportIn most browsers, such as Internet Explorer, a plugin is needed to see SVG images in the browser window. Currently available SVG plugins include Adobe SVG Viewer (http://www.adobe.com/svg/viewer/install/main.html) and Corel SVG Viewer (http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=Corel/Downloads/Details&id=1047022177437). Native supportA special version of Mozilla, called "Croczilla", now supports parts of the W3C SVG Standard, but much is still unsupported; the eventual goal is that SVG can be displayed without any need for plug-ins. The KDE project's Konqueror web browser also has a fairly complete SVG implementation called ksvg (http://svg.kde.org/). Since they share the KHTML rendering engine, support will likely filter down to Apple's Safari browser in future. Elsewhere in KDE the format is finding greater use, and from version 3.4 onwards SVG wallpapers are supported. SVG is natively supported in the Amaya web browser. Java programs can make use of the Batik SVG Toolkit (http://xml.apache.org/batik/) to render, generate, and manipulate SVG graphics. ToolsMost of the major drawing software packages such as Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw support SVG export. OpenOffice.org Draw 1.1 and up can also export SVG files whilst SVGmaker (http://www.svgmaker.com) creates SVG from standard Windows programs including the ubiquitous Office suite. Sodipodi and Inkscape are two other (open source, multi-platform) tools that use the SVG format. Sketsa (http://www.kiyut.com/products/sketsa/index.html) is another native SVG Graphics Editor. Like the way XML has different kinds of standard parsers to read and write, SVG also has the same counterparts. An example of such technology is Batik (http://xml.apache.org/batik/) from Apache. Batik supplies a set of standard modules like SVG Parser, SVG Generator and SVG DOM. Now Microsoft supports the viewing of SVG files in the Internet Explorer browser. Projects that use SVG include Together, JFreeChart (http://www.jfree.org/jfreechart/), and Compuware's OptimalJ (http://www.compuware.com/products/optimalj/). Free Tools
See alsoExternal links
SVG clipart
m:SVG image support. It is not yet possible to embed SVG files in Wikipedia articles as with ordinary images: e.g. [[Image:Wp sunflower yellow.svg]]
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