News Release: World Wide Web Consortium Issues Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 and Mobile SVG as W3C Recommendations

SVG, the Web's Open Graphics Format, now reaches beyond the desktop to
pocket computers, pagers, PDA's and cellphones, as SVG 1.1 and SVG
Mobile become W3C Recommendations. For more information, please contact
Janet Daly, Head of Communications at W3C, +1 617 253 5884 <janet@w3.org>.

Web Resources:

This Press Release
	http://www.w3.org/2003/01/svg11-pressrelease.html.en (English)
	http://www.w3.org/2003/01/svg11-pressrelease.html.fr (Japanese)
	http://www.w3.org/2003/01/svg11-pressrelease.html.ja (French)

Testimonials from Adobe; BitFlash; Canon; Corel; CSIRO; Ericsson;
Hewlett Packard; ILOG; KDDI; Nokia; Openwave; Schema Software; Sharp;
Texas Instruments
	http://www.w3.org/2003/01/svg11-testimonial

SVG 1.1
	http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/REC-SVG11-20030114/
SVG Mobile
	http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/REC-SVGMobile-20030114/


World Wide Web Consortium Issues Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 and
Mobile SVG as W3C Recommendations

Open Graphics Format Extends Multimedia Beyond the Desktop to Cellphones
and Pocket Computers

Testimonials are also available at:
http://www.w3.org/2003/01/svg11-testimonial

http://www.w3.org/ -- 14 January 2003 --Leading the Web to its full
potential, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has issued Scalable
Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 and Mobile SVG Profiles as W3C
Recommendations. SVG 1.1 separates SVG capabilities into reusable
building blocks, and SVG Mobile re-combines them in a way optimized for
mobile devices. Advancement of these documents to Recommendation
indicates that these W3C-developed specifications are stable, contribute
to Web interoperability, and have been reviewed by the W3C Membership,
who favor their adoption by the industry.

SVG 1.1 Brings Modularization to Vector Graphics

The graphical capabilities of SVG 1.1 are the same as those of the
widely implemented SVG 1.0 , which has been a W3C Recommendation since 4
September 2001. 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. The SVG Working Group used the same proven
modularization techniques pioneered by the HTML Working Group for XHTML
modularization.

Mobile SVG Profiles bring Vector Graphics to Handheld Devices

There is an explosion of interest in handheld devices and mobile phones
which have color screens, improved processing power and can deliver
enhanced multimedia functionality. These still fall short of the
capabilities of desktop and laptop machines, but are now capable of
displaying Web standard technologies such as XHTML, SMIL and SVG. W3C
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.

"Cellphones allow Internet and Web access for millions of people who
don't have access to desktop machines, temporarily or otherwise," said
Dean Jackson, W3C Fellow from CSIRO. "With 3GPP already incorporating
Mobile SVG, we are already starting to see more rich and useful content
in third generation cellphones."

Instead of sending text messages or canned, bitmap logos, SVG Tiny now
makes it possible to send a colorful animated multimedia message.
Instead of juggling a laptop or taking a static printout to the factory
floor, construction site, hospital ward, or trading room, SVG Basic now
enables the mobile professional to consult up to date, interactive,
informative graphics on a convenient pocket computer which is
dynamically updated over a wireless network connected to the XML
information hub of the enterprise.

SVG 1.1 Integrates with Open Technologies, XML components

Another way that W3C and others are making use of the modular SVG 1.1
building blocks is to combine them with building blocks from other W3C
technologies to produce more powerful, integrated solutions. Examples
include the combination of SVG and XForms to construct graphically rich,
interactive input forms, or SVG and SMIL Basic to combine vector
graphics with streaming audio and video, or XHTML, MathML and SVG for
scientific and technical communication including text with headings,
lists and tables; mathematical equations, and interactive graphs and
diagrams.

"As with all W3C Recommendations, SVG builds on established, open W3C
technologies such as XML, CSS and DOM. SVG also has received rigorous
review for Internationalization and Web Accessibility requirements,
which results in natural integration with existing technologies. This
maximizes application power while minimizing its footprint," said Chris
Lilley, chair of the SVG Working Group and member of the W3C Technical
Architecture Group (TAG). "Adopting open, truly standards-based
solutions has already shown return on investment; the pieces fit
together in powerful, extensible and economical ways."

SVG Mobile is now deployed

Commercial services using SVG Mobile are now being deployed, including
location based services using geographical metadata embedded in the SVG.
The SVG Working Group is pleased by both the number of SVG 1.1 and SVG
Mobile implementations and their quality of rendering and
interoperability. Fifteen implementations were tested in November 2002,
including SVG Tiny implementations from Bitflash, CSIRO, KDDI, Nokia,
ZOOMON and SVG Basic implementations from Bitflash, CSIRO, and Intesis;
others were also under development but were not tested at that time.

As a result of these compatibility trials, SVG implementations are
available now from multiple vendors for integration into cellphones or
deployment on PDAs in addition to the increasing number of
implementations for desktop and laptop computers. Conformance to one of
the two profiles, rather than each manufacturer choosing their own
subset, ensures widespread interoperability of content across mobile
devices from different manufacturers. This interoperability has three
advantages for content creators: lower development costs, wider
availability, and a trust in being able to display their content in any
compliant implementation. As Mobile SVG is a true subset of SVG 1.1, all
conformant desktop players will correctly display all Mobile SVG
content, ensuring the Mobile and desktop worlds continue to share a
common, standards-based Web.


SVG Has Broad, Continued Industry Support

The SVG Working Group has benefitted from the expertise of leading names
in the graphics and mobile communications industries, including: Adobe,
Agfa-Gevaert N.V., America Online Inc., BitFlash, Canon, Corel
Corporation, CSIRO, Eastman Kodak, Ericsson, Expway, Hewlett-Packard,
ILOG S.A., KDDI Research Labs, Nokia, Openwave Systems Ltd, Quark,
Savage Software, Schema Software, Sharp Corporation, Sun Microsystems
Inc. and ZOOMON AB. Many already have, or plan to provide, product
support for SVG 1.1 and Mobile SVG.

For more information on SVG, see the W3C SVG Overview.


Testimonials from Adobe; BitFlash; Canon; Corel; CSIRO; Ericsson;
Hewlett Packard; ILOG; KDDI; Nokia; Openwave; Schema Software; Sharp;
Texas Instruments


W3C
Testimonials for W3C's SVG 1.1 W3C Recommendation

These testimonials are in support of SVG 1.1 Press Release.

In English: Adobe | BitFlash | Canon | Corel | CSIRO | Ericsson |
Hewlett Packard | ILOG | KDDI |Nokia | Openwave | Schema Software |
Sharp | Texas Instruments

In French: Corel | CSIRO

In Japanese: - please see the testimonials on the Web.

Adobe is very pleased that the SVG 1.1 and SVG Mobile specifications
have become W3C Recommendations. SVG is a fundamental element of Adobe's
Network Publishing strategy that will allow precise delivery of visually
rich, personalized content in an XML syntax. Adobe is enabling a new
generation of dynamic data-driven graphics by incorporating SVG across
its product line, including Adobe Illustrator® 10.0, Adobe Document
Server, Adobe Graphics Server 2.0, Adobe GoLive® 6.0, Adobe InDesign®
2.0, and Adobe FrameMaker® 7.0.

-- Jon Ferraiolo, Advanced Technology Group, Adobe Systems

BitFlash is truly excited to have contributed to such an important
undertaking as the W3C Mobile SVG profiles. Mobile SVG is already an
important standard recognized by the wireless industry, including the
3GPP, and it forms a critical part of the BitFlash Mobile SVG line of
players, content creation and transcoding tools. We believe Mobile SVG
will help the wireless market realize substantial data revenues as it
enables device manufacturers, MMS service providers, content creators,
operators and portals to deliver a much richer, personal, and
informative user experience.

-- Frédéric Charpentier, President and Chief Technology Officer,
BitFlash Inc.

The module based SVG 1.1 specification represents a significant step
forward for the adoption of vector graphics technology on a wide range
of information appliances. Canon is very pleased by the release of SVG
1.1 and SVG Mobile Profiles as W3C Recommendations. We expect that SVG
will bring compelling graphical content to a variety of mobile devices.

-- Yukichi Niwa, Group Executive, Canon Inc.

We are extremely proud to be an active participant in the creation and
design of the SVG Mobile specification. Open standards such as SVG
Mobile are the only suitable solution to meet the growing demand for
effective visual access to information, applications and services --
regardless of user location or device. Our recently launched deepwhite
initiative targets the needs of enterprise and government customers with
content solutions that leverage open standards such as XML, SVG, and SVG
Mobile.

-- Ian LeGrow, executive vice president of New Ventures for Corel

CSIRO is very pleased to have participated in the effective
international collaborative effort that has now seen SVG 1.1 and SVG
Mobile become Candidate Recommendations of the W3C. As Australia's
premier research and development organisation, CSIRO believes SVG will
be a major force in a wide range of markets, especially mobile
computing, and has made a commitment to the SVG community with its
PocketSVG technology, a toolkit for developing Mobile SVG applications.

-- Dr Geoff Garrett, Chief Executive Officer, CSIRO Australia

Ericsson welcomes Mobile SVG as a new cornerstone for enriching the
graphical appearance of mobile multimedia applications. We have taken
active part in the work of defining the Mobile SVG Profiles
specification. Our intention is to support this technology in our mobile
platform solutions to facilitate the development of powerful multimedia
applications by mobile handset vendors as well as third party
application developers.

-- Michael Kornby, Vice President Technology Strategies, Ericsson Mobile
Platforms AB

Hewlett Packard is firmly committed to the use of open standards on the
Internet and is pleased to have contributed to the development of SVG
1.1 and SVG Mobile. We believe the SVG Mobile specification will
facilitate content use and development for small mobile devices --
helping to speed up the deployment of SVG in meeting a wide-range of
content management needs for a variety of mobile users.

-- Evan Smouse IPG Director of Strategic Technology

With SVG 1.1, developers can now create SVG to go, bringing the power of
SVG graphics to handheld devices. ILOG is pleased to have been a part of
bringing this new mobile graphics revolution into being - as a W3C SVG
working group member, as a vendor with one of the first commercial
products to support SVG, ILOG JViews, and finally, as an open source
contributor with Batik, the Apache XML toolkit for SVG.

- - Patrick Megard, Director of ILOG Visualization Product Line

As a major Japanese cellular phone career, KDDI has long been working on
the popularization of Web services for mobile terminals and is currently
developing various content services based on SVG Mobile. As such, we are
very pleased to see that now SVG 1.1/Mobile Profile become a
Recommendation which, we believe, will certainly facilitate further the
utilization of Mobile Web services or map information services and thus
make SVG one of major communication media for cellular phone users.

-- Masahiro Wada, Executive Director, KDDI R&D Laboratories Incorporated

Nokia welcomes the advancement of Mobile SVG to W3C Recommendation. We
believe that Mobile SVG will play a significant role in future mobile
multimedia applications. Nokia has demonstrated its commitment to W3C
open standards by taking the responsibility of the editorship for the
new specification, and has strongly driven the adoption in 3GPP
standards of the Mobile SVG profile for Multimedia Messaging Service
(MMS) and Packet Switched Streaming (PSS). Nokia believes that the
availability of a open and mobile-friendly standard for the creation of
vector graphics content will play a central role in creating a dynamic
and rich market for applications that fully exploit the capabilities of
these exciting technologies.

- - Janne Juhola, Senior Technology Manager, Multimedia - Nokia Mobile
Phones, Nokia, Inc.

Openwave is pleased to have contributed to the development of SVG
1.1/Mobile for the benefit of the mobile industry. This standard will
enable and improve the user experience of messaging services and other
entertaining mobile applications, providing more revenue opportunities
for handset manufacturers, mobile network operators, and content developers.

-- Bruce Martin, VP of Technology, Openwave Systems, Inc.

SchemaSoft is happy to see W3C extending the applicability of SVG to
mobile devices by endorsing SVG 1.1 and SVG Mobile as Recommendations.
Based on our experience as SVG software consultants and active
participants since the SVG Working Group's inception, SchemaSoft sees
significant opportunity for SVG on mobile devices. By generating
interactive SVG content on the fly from server data, the next generation
of mobile Web applications and services will provide much more powerful,
compelling graphical front ends. SchemaSoft makes such graphically rich
Web applications possible with tools like Catwalk™ for data
visualization and Cleopatra™ for GIS applications.

-- Philip Mansfield, President, Schema Software Inc.

Sharp is pleased that SVG 1.1 and SVG Mobile Profiles have been
officially released as recommended by the W3C (World Wide Web
Consortium). Sharp has been implementing "e-animator (SharpMotionART),"
using vector graphics technology, in many types of equipment, including
cellular phones, and has also provided various related services. Based
on these experiences, Sharp will continue to provide mobile services
that make the most of SVG. Sharp hopes that SVG will be widely used in
mobile computing applications and will lead to the creation of many new
services.

-- Toru Chiba, Ph.D., Group Deputy General Manager of Corporate Research
and Development Group, Division General Manager of System Technology
Development Center, Sharp Corporation

Texas Instruments believes open standards such as the Mobile SVG
profiles are important catalysts for helping the wireless industry
generate informative and entertaining content for the mobile user. As a
result, we are excited to enable optimized versions of the BitFlash
Mobile SVG Tiny and Basic compliant players today as a part of a
standard software offering for TI's OMAP platform. Working with industry
leaders, such as Bitflash, demonstrates TI's commitment to deliver
processing engines that bring SVG and multimedia content to wireless
handsets.

-- Paul Werp, Worldwide Director of Marketing for TI's OMAP Platform,
Semiconductor Group, Texas Instruments

ZOOMON is proud to have been a part of re-enforcing W3C's commitment to
open graphics communication through the SVG 1.1 specification. We are
especially encouraged by the standardization of the SVG Mobile Profiles.
We believe strongly that they will accelerate the acceptance of SVG as a
basis for visual mobile communication. The range of mobile devices on
the market is increasingling diverse, and SVG Mobile is the key to open
visual communication between them. Our ZOOMON SVG Player and ZOOMON
Composer are SVG Mobile compliant software solutions for rich SVG
content for mass-market mobile phones and other mobile devices. With a
proven track record from numerous RTOS and Symbian based platforms, the
ZOOMON SVG Player requires a minimum of memory and CPU, and is easily
integrated.

-- Stefan Elmstedt, CEO ZOOMON Mobile Solutions AB

La spécification SVG 1.1 (Graphiques vectoriels adaptables) et les
profils SVG pour terminaux mobiles constituent des pas importants vers
la généralisation de cette technologie. En tant que membre actif du
groupe de travail W3C dédié à SVG, Corel tient à incorporer cette
technologie dans de nombreuses applications graphiques primées dont
CorelDRAW 11, Corel Grafigo, Corel SVG Viewer et Corel Smart Graphics
Studio. SVG est pour nous le format idéal des graphismes intelligents et
dynamiques pour le Web et les communications mobiles, et c’est notre
technologie de prédilection pour créer des solutions graphiques
intelligentes pour entreprises

-- Ian LeGrow, vice-président exécutif, Nouvelles initiatives de Corel
Corporation

CSIRO est heureux d'avoir fait partie de l'efficace collaboration
internationale qui a permis que SVG 1.1 et SVG Mobile deviennent des
spécifications Candidates à Recommandation du W3C. Persuadé que SVG va
devenir une force majeure pour un grand nombre de marchés, CSIRO, la
principale organisation de Recherche et Développement d'Australie, s'est
beaucoup investi dans la communauté SVG, en particulier pour
l'informatique nomade avec sa technologie PocketSVG, un kit pour le
développement d'applications de SVG pour terminaux mobiles.

-- Dr Geoff Garrett, Chief Executive Officer, CSIRO Australie

About the World Wide Web Consortium [W3C]

The W3C was created to lead the Web to its full potential by developing
common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its
interoperability. It is an international industry consortium jointly run
by the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (MIT LCS) in the USA,
European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM)
headquartered in France and Keio University in Japan. Services provided
by the Consortium include: a repository of information about the World
Wide Web for developers and users, reference code implementations to
embody and promote standards, and various prototype and sample
applications to demonstrate use of new technology. To date, nearly 450
organizations are Members of the Consortium.

For more information about the World Wide Web Consortium, see
http://www.w3.org/









Contact Americas, Australia --
Janet Daly, <janet@w3.org>, +1.617.253.5884 or +1.617.253.2613

Contact Europe --
Marie-Claire Forgue, <mcf@w3.org>, +33.492.38.75.94

Contact Asia --
Saeko Takeuchi <saeko@w3.org>, +81.466.49.1170


About the World Wide Web Consortium [W3C]

The W3C was created to lead the Web to its full potential by developing
common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its
interoperability. It is an international industry consortium jointly run
by the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (MIT LCS) in the USA, the
European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM)
headquartered in France and Keio University in Japan. Services provided
by the Consortium include: the development and testing of Web Standards,
a repository of information about the World Wide Web for developers and
users, and various prototype and sample applications to demonstrate use
of new technology. To date, nearly 450 organizations are Members of the
Consortium. For more information see http://www.w3.org/

###

Received on Tuesday, 14 January 2003 10:05:54 UTC