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Article:
SVG: A Sure Bet
Subject: Missing the point
Date: 2003-07-17 18:03:57
From: Paul Prescod
Response to: Missing the point
Tony says: "Flash however, is an entire platform in which you develop Rich Media Applications and Presentations"


Well, my presentation is available in SVG here:


http://www.blastradius.com/svgopen2003/


And SVG can embed animations, sound and video. That sounds like Rich Media Applications. So SVG can do Rich Media Applications and Presentations. You might want to look into SMIL.


Tony says: "The thing that this article fails to point out is where SVG really will succeed. Being a standard transmission medium for vector graphics information from one application to another."


The article says: "Many SVG importers, exporters, and converters are already available. Users increasingly expect every graphics manipulation or visualization program to support SVG import and export." It also says: "SVG will also become the interchange syntax for all sorts of industry-specific or corporation-specific data visualization systems, from maps of oil fields to architectural designs to molecular models."


Tony says: "I have created hundreds of commercial projects with Flash for the web and for the desktop, and for the pocket PC, and for cell phones, and for playstation, so the point about going where Flash can't go is rubbish"


Is Flash going to be integrated into Linux desktops? Is Flash going to be a part of the 3GPP standards? Is there a project to integrate SVG into X-Windows.


Tony says: "It makes me laugh when I think that in the next couple years, all of these SVG people that have been bitching at Flash, saying SVG is a Flash Killer, could suddenly find themselves using the Flash Player as their main display plug-in."


Tony: "And it is likely that in the future the Flash Player will support it natively, because the Flash Player is the most widely adopted vector graphics renderer out there."


If Macromedia produced a standards-based media platform I would be overjoyed. I don't care if it is called the 'Flash Player' as long as it consumes a subset of SVG, SMIL and Javascript comparable in size to the competitive SVG implementations. If you want to treat that as "Flash wins" that's fine. In my opinion, that would be everybody winning.


But to be just a little childish: what could more vividely prove my point than Macromedia adopting Flash? Standards can go places that proprietary languages cannot. Macromedia can support SVG and be on an equal ground with everyone else. Adobe cannot create a Flash viewer and be on equal ground with Macromedia. Thus, one of those scenarios is feasible and the other is not. That's why SVG will "win" in the sense of being much more ubiquitous than Flash.

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  • Missing the point
    2003-07-19 18:21:48 x emplify [Reply]

    Paul wrote: "Well, my presentation is available in SVG here:
    http://www.blastradius.com/svgopen2003/
    "


    Unfortunately I could not view this using either the Corel viewer in Mozilla 1.4 in Windows XP or using the Java open-source Batik Squiggle SVG viewer.


    I found the following errors:


    1) At line 14973: equality (==) mistyped as assignment (=)


    My fix, change from:
    while (gpage = doc.getElementById("Page_"+p)) {
    to:
    while (gpage == doc.getElementById("Page_"+p)) {

    2) At line 5370, col 167: incomplete path element, and path element not allowed within tspan element


    My fix, change from:
    <path d="M180.343,153.481c0,27
    to:
    <!--<path d="M180.343,153.481c0,27-->


    At this point the file would still not work in the the viewers due to more scripting related problems.


    When I came across SVG three years ago, I too was very excited by the possiblities that it offered. I applaud Paul's efforts to promote SVG. However my inability to view this file highlights one of the problems SVG faces: generators and viewers that do not follow the SVG specification.


    It seems that the SVG generator Paul used to produce his presentation produced non well-formed XML, invalid SVG and erroneous EcmaScript. Presumably some SVG viewer allows the file to be viewed dispite the mistakes, leading to the false belief that it is conformant SVG.


    It is up to SVG developers to demand that implementors respect the SVG specfication, otherwise all the promise of interoperability is for nothing. In the mean time those producing SVG for the web should check their files for cross viewer compatibility.


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