Article:		SVG: A Sure Bet
Subject:		argument
Date:		2003-07-17 04:09:35
From:		bryan rasmussen
the chessgml example in your argument is of course predicated on using more technologies than just svg. a flash person, which I am not, could just as easily argue that they could build a chessgml consumer for flash. when you say "They have left so many domains open for SVG because of the inherent limitations of proprietary (in the sense of corporate-controlled) binary formats" the only real indications of such domains I get from you is the domain of a common interchange format and the domain of desktop display; the usage of svg as the output of some process involving transformation/consumption of another format is not really a domain. If you have examples of other domains to offer I would appreciate it. Also what Mike said about Adobe writing swf.

Previous Message

Next Message

• argument
  2003-07-17 18:22:04 Paul Prescod
  
  Rasmussen says: "the chessgml example in your argument is of course predicated on using more technologies than just svg. a flash person, which I am not, could just as easily argue that they could build a chessgml consumer for flash"

  
  Yes, a Flash expert could easily generate Flash from ChessGML and an SVG expert could easily generate SVG from ChessGML. But what would an unbiased ChessGML programmer likely choose? One is a well-documented, open standard with no licensing requirements whatsoever. One is XML (as ChessGML is). One uses the same DOM that HTML and XML does. One format has a variety of competitive client implementations from .NET to Java to Symbian to C++/COM.

  
  Rasmussen says: " the usage of svg as the output of some process involving transformation/consumption of another format is not really a domain."

  
  Why not? It isn't an industry but it is a problem domain.

  
  Rasmussen says: "If you have examples of other domains to offer I would appreciate it."

  
  Well, the cartography industry has clearly made its choice. But then you might claim that that is just conversion from another format too. As I said in the article, any real domain is likely to already have a more specialized format. SVG is the interchange format.

  
  It doesn't matter to me whether you define these as domains or not. The point is that SVG is filling in the gaps left by existing standards. When it completes the process of filling in those gaps it will replace the main domains of those standards just by virtue of its ubiquity. That's my thesis and I think it will play out over the next five years.