Re: SVG and the promise of smaller size

Adobe has SVG browser plugins under development that we have demonstrated
at numerous conferences. Somehow or other, our SVG browser plugins will do
client-side decompression, thereby allowing compressed files to be
transmitted along the wire.

Regarding the whole issue of smaller files sizes with SVG - I personally
have studied this issue quite a bit. One thing I have found is that GIF
(also PNG!) is a very a good format for achieving reasonable size images.
Thus, it is relatively common that a particular uncompressed SVG file will
be bigger than a corresponding GIF. As people point out, with compression,
a higher percentage of SVG files will be smaller than the corresponding
image. But, as other people have pointed out, because SVG represents its
graphics as objects with attributes, you get many advantages over images,
such as ability to zoom, printing at full resolution, sophisticated
interactivity and animation, full access to the DOM for scripting, ability
to substitute the text based on user language, accessibility for the
visually impaired, and re-editability, just to name a few.

Jon Ferraiolo
SVG Editor
Adobe Systems Incorporated

At 03:35 PM 10/15/99 -0400, Steve Mulder wrote:
>At 9:21 PM +0200 10/15/99, Fredrik Lundh wrote:
>>Apu Nahasapeemapetilon wrote:
>>> One of the benefits of SVG being touted is smaller
>>> file size when compared to bitmapped formats. But
>>> in general, SVG files are not necessarily smaller.
>>>
>>> There are many examples on this site:
>>>   http://indy.cs.concordia.ca/svg/examples/index.html
>>> The examples are available in GIF as well as SVG
>>> formats. In most cases the GIF files are smaller!
>>
>>you're comparing LZW-compressed GIF files
>>with uncompressed SVG files.  if you use ZIP
>>compression on typical SVG files, you end up
>>with something nearly as compact as Flash...
>>
>
>
>Would SVG files normally be compressed if embedded in a web page? I'm not
>clear on how SVG files live on the server and how they're transmitted over
>the wires. Are they compressed on the server side and decompressed by the
>browser?
>
>steve
>

Received on Friday, 15 October 1999 16:11:28 UTC