Batik at JavaOne

Hi,

Following are my impressions of the Batik presence at this year's JavaOne.  
There were two sessions specifically about Batik (a "BOF" or Birds of a 
Feather session and a technical session), and additionally Batik and/or SVG 
came up in several other contexts throughout the conference. 

The BOF was fantastic.  The participants clearly knew their subject inside 
out, and they clearly had some superior software to show off.  Remembering  
back to the dawn of Java 2D, when the poor embarrassed presenters managed to 
skate along with concepts and promises rather than awesome demos, this was  
the exact opposite.  Java 2D has truly come of age, and it was shown off by  
Batik exceptionally well.  It was also shown off by a Java 2D app, ILOG's  
JView, that exports SVG. 

In true open source style the audience decided the sequence of the topics 
covered, and appropriately the slides were SVG, all slides for several  
presentations on a single SVG that was zoomed and navigated via SVG  
controls.  This presentation would be quite nice to have available on the  
web.  Didn't find it searching google... 

There was some practical talk of how to add SVG to a Java 2 app, a concise 
overview of the architecture of Batik, an explanation of the data flow of 
Batik, and talk of the present and future of Batik. 

In terms of the present they said that Batik 1.0 covered static SVG, full 
linking support, and some scripting, but did not yet include SMIL. 

In terms of the future the Batik team spoke of the desire to add further 
dynamic support, including both improved scripting and SMIL.  They said they 
wished to modularize the implementation.  They mentioned that SVG 1.0 was  
virtually complete, there was also the likelihood (certainty?) of an SVG 2.0 
Working Group defining a 2.0 spec, and the possibilities for 2.0 were  
discussed.  Apparently there is also the possibility of a lighter weight  
spec for SVG aimed at small devices. 

ILOG demonstrated their JViews Composer Suite, which is a set of components 
for 2D graphics.  Quite an awesome demo, almost upstaged Batik itself.  At  
least it exports (static) SVG.  If anyone doubts the capabilities of Java  
2D, ILOG's software would put any such doubts to rest; it is simply awesome. 

At the Batik technical session on Friday they really showed off Batik: 
unfortunately the large hall was rather sparsely populated, but those who  
were there were on the edge of their seats.  The Batik team demonstrated the 
use of Batik on the server to generate business cards, and the use of Batik  
for internationalization.  They showed the extreme zoom capabilities of  
Batik/SVG, very impressive. 

Batik and SVG also came up as a subject at other JavaOne sessions.  For 
example in the JAXP BOF, the XSLT transformation demo transformed into SVG,  
which was then rasterized to .PNG, using Batik. 

As one who attended JavaOne way back in 1998 when XML was covered in similar 
fashion (I think there were 4 sessions total on XML that year, and it may  
have come up tangentially in about 15 others), SVG had a similar feel to it. 
Those who knew about it were all deeply enthusiastic about it, and those who 
found out about it were almost instantly enthusiastic about it.  I think  
that SVG will really take off, in large part thanks to Batik. 

Max
http://www.siliconpublishing.org/svgfaq/

Received on Wednesday, 13 June 2001 14:54:14 UTC