Re: IBM and SVG?

Hello,

AndrewWatt2001@aol.com wrote:
> In Chris Lilley's Foreword in SVG Unleashed he mentions that IBM had a 
> prototype SVG implementation as far back as 1999.
> 
> Does anyone know what happened to it?
> 
> Did it, for example, end up at the Apache Foundation? Was it the foundation 
> of Batik?
> 

No, the IBM code did not end up in Batik. While IBM was supportive of 
the Batik effort when it started, they did not contribute code or resources.

Here is the standard description we give of the Batik project's origins 
(copied from a presentation Thomas DeWeese and I gave at ApacheCon Santa 
Clara in 2001):

=============================================================================
Batik's History
· What: a Java language SVG toolkit
· When: Summer of 2000, multiple teams/companies
interested in participating in an open-source
project. Started in October, beta 1 in December
· Who:
   - Sun Microsystems, Inc.
   - Eastman Kodak, Company
   - Koala/INRIA (French research institute)
   - ILOG (French graphic software company)
   - CSIRO (Australian research institute)

The Batik project started out during the summer of 2000. At that time, 
several organizations recognized that:
1) several teams in the industry were attempting to implement the SVG 
specification on the Java platform
2) none of the teams had the resources to do a complete implementation 
of the SVG specification. Each had different strengths and
3) existing teams and other partners were interested in making a joined 
open-source effort

Following, Sun convinced the various teams to join into an open-source 
effort:

a) Kodak, which brought no code but an extremely valuable expertise in 
image processing
b) INRIA/Koala team, a French research organization that had the most 
solid SVG implementation at the
time
c) ILOG, a French software company that brought resources and expertise.
d) Sun contributed software (from the Java Advanced Imaging team, the 
Java 2D team, and the XML Technology center, with the SVG generator) and 
resources

Work actively started in October 2000 when the various contributors 
started to integrate the various contributions while the project 
infrastructure (CVS code repository, mailing lists, web site, etc...) 
were put in place. The first release came in December 2000.

========================================================================
Regards,
Vincent.


> If it wasn't, or even if it was, can someone spell out the origins and early 
> development of the Batik project? 
> 
> Andrew Watt
>

Received on Wednesday, 30 October 2002 04:57:00 UTC