Re: SVG ideas and questions:

At 04:38 PM 3/3/99 -0800, Andrew Wooldridge wrote:
>Here are some assorted SVG questions and ideas I've stored up over the
>past few days:
>
>Ideas:
>
>1) since you can imbed images (section 14) it seems like svg could
>become a way not only to create vector graphics but to allow _any_ image
>to have XML information which would make it searchable, etc.
>For instance I could wrap all the gifs on my site in svg, and now I
>could also put additional information on those images, but the user
>would not see much difference (except a little more file overhead)

Yes, you could do that. You could also do that in HTML once it gets
reexpressed in XML.

>
>2)Could you create "signed" images - with jar files and digital
>signatures?

I heard that the XML working might be addressing some of these issues.

>3) Instead of caching just SVG images as a whole, it might be
>interesting to cache sub-components which get re-used throughout the
>site.

I would hope that the browser would cache SVG files just like it caches
HTML and image files.

>
>Questions:
>1) Would SVG images be incrementally rendered (as components load) or
>does it wait till the whole svg file is read?

The SVG Requirements document says that the SVG specification needs to
allow for implementations to do incremental drawing as the SVG document
streams along the phone line.

>
>2) could svg files get loaded via OBJECT or EMBED tags as well as
>inlined?

If some customer-oriented company (e.g., Adobe) provided SVG browser
plugins for older browsers, then you would invoke these plugins via the
OBJECT or EMBED tags. (And Adobe has already announced it is planning to
provide such browser plugins.)

In newer, SVG-enabled browsers, you would reference an out-of-line SVG
standalone file via an href. I'm not sure what the exact element name is
going to be which will have this href. Maybe <svg> (e.g., <svg
href="MyDrawing.svg" />) or SVG's <g> element (e.g., <g xmlns="...svg..."
href="MyDrawing.svg" />.

>3) could SVG files get a LOWSRC sort of thing? In flash you see a MM
>logo with a progress bar to show it loading - would SVG have something
>similar?

Good suggestion. I'll bring it up in the working group.

>4) Are there ANY implementations of this yet? I am dying to see
>something - even in java or server-side.

Adobe has already demonstrated browser plugins and Java applets for PGML.
We will be transitioning from PGML to SVG (i.e., the current public draft
specification) in the very near term. We will be demoing these SVG
implementations at tradeshows and conferences.

At some point Adobe will post plugins for older browsers and sample SVG
files for public download for people to experiment with, but I can't
provide exact dates or details.

Jon Ferraiolo
Adobe Systems Incorporated
Member SVG working group

Received on Wednesday, 3 March 1999 22:03:47 UTC