Re: SVG and the promise of smaller size

Apu,
While the title of the article does mention fast downloads ("Smart Curves.
SVG promises fast downloads and new design flexibility for the Web), the
article does attempt to keep expectations at least somewhat in line. Here
is a snippet of text from that article:

       "Vectors aren't for everyone

       With all these cool features, why would anyone want to use anything
but SVG? Unfortunately, while you can draw a lot of things with vectors,
there are some things vectors are just lousy at. Most importantly, scanned
images (which are always bitmapped) will generally beat vector art in
detail and photorealistic quality. The more detail in an image, the less
useful vector art is. (Drawing every leaf of every tree is a forest using
Bezier curves would be painful).
       Fortunately, SVG lets you mix images in formats such as GIF, JPEG
and PNG with your vector art....
       Of course, the vector art could be scaled to any size (or rotated or
skewed or whatever) and remain high quality, whereas the bitmapped image
may become blurred -- an effect similar to what happens when you make
dramatic size changes to an image in Photoshop. Well, no one said there
wouldn't be trade-offs."

Another aspect that no one has mentioned yet is progressive rendering. Even
if a given SVG file turns out to be the same size as a GIF, and even
suppose you don't care about zooming, or printing, or interactivity, or
animation, or text selection, or accessibility, SVG has the advantage that
it can start rendering meaningful graphics as it receives it (and a user
can start interacting with it immediately), whereas an image generally is
indecipherable until fully loaded, even if interlacing is used.

Jon


At 04:35 PM 10/15/99 -0700, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon wrote:
>Here is an example of what I am talking about:
>
>http://www.adobe.com/products/adobemag/archive/pdfs/99smtsdb.pdf
>
>This article in Adobe magazine touts SVG as a compact
>format. This sets wrong expectations, and could
>ultimately lead to the rejection of this nascent
>format.
>
>--- Michael Gould <gould@inf.uji.es> wrote:
>> I personally have not seen people overtly touting
>> SVG as a compact format.
>> 
>
>
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Received on Friday, 15 October 1999 20:13:20 UTC