Re: SVG 1.2 General feedback

On Tuesday 19 November 2002 3:01 pm, Tobias Reif wrote:
|  Vadim Plessky wrote:
|  > SVG -based User Interface (Widgets, Window Decorations, etc.) is in my
|  > plans, but I would like to see capable renderer (available as
|  > Open-Source) first.
|
|  I'm not sure, but
|     http://svg.kde.org/
|  might already do support a lot of what you need:
|     http://svg.kde.org/Screenshots/index.html
|     http://svg.kde.org/Screenshots/desktop.png
|     http://www.everaldo.com/images/ico3.jpg

Well, I am quite familiar with KSVG, as I am running KDE 3.1 (pre-release) ;-)
I also use librsvg2, which is a SVG static renderer, used by Nautilus (GNOME 
file manager)

I myself working on set of SVG icons. It's called BlueSphere.
http://svgicons.sourceforge.net
In a short, it's an alternative icon set for KDE (and in the future - GNOME) 
Desktop.
I am aware about exsiting of Crystal icons (by Everaldo and Tackat), but don't 
like some aspects of those icons.

My question was more related to other User Interface elements, like Buttons, 
Mouse Pointers, Window Decoartions, desktop Backgrounds, etc.

|
|  AFAIK, it's a KDE component, and could perhaps be used for Window deco
| etc.
|
|  > Xr/Xc, together with libsvg and librxsvg, are very promising
|  > technologies,
|
|  Sounds great! Is there some info available online about what they
|  support and how they can be used?

Quotes from Carl Worth's mail:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Xr provides an API that is very much like the Postscript drawing API,
 (also much like the SVG graphics operations). Typical Xr code looks
 like this:

       XrState *xrs = XrCreate(xrs);
       XrSetDrawable(xrs, drawable);

       XrMoveTo(xrs, 10, 10);
       XrCurveTo(xrs, 10.5, 20, 15, 20, 17, 18);

       XrSetLineWidth(xrs, 1.2);
       XrSetRGBColor(xrs, 1.0, 0.5, 0.2);
       XrSetAlpha(xrs, 0.5);
       XrStroke(xrs);

....
 I've [Carl Worth] been running xsvg on the tests from the W3C SVG conformance
 suite. For the tests which pass I have been posting source SVG files,
 xsvg results and the reference images at:

       http://keithp.com/~cworth/svg/conformance/
...

Mailing list:
        http://neptune.east.isi.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xsvg

The purpose of this mailing list is to discuss SVG support for the X
Window System. Appropriate topics for discussion include the
following:

xsvg            X11 SVG viewer (using libxrsvg)

libxrsvg        Render libsvg objects with Xr

libsvg          Parse SVG documents, (relies on libxml2 and libpng),
                and render via abstract rendering interface.

Xr              Postscript-like API for drawing in X, (using Xc)
                Will also eventually support PNG/PDF output as well.

Xc              Intended to provide client-side emulation of the
                RENDER extension, (still unfinished)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Idea about Xr/Xc/libsvg  is to provide low-level drawing / rendering API for 
XFree86, with SVG rendering capability, and reuse libs on higher level (Qt, 
GTK libs, GNOME and KDE Desktop Environments)

Just imagine for a second that Windows GDI API is capable to render SVG files, 
so that no SVG plugin for MS IE or Netscape is required. 
And you will get an idea what I am speaking about.

I am working on "content" part at the moment (SVG icons).
You can see some details at:
http://freshmeat.net/projects/svg-icons/
SVG sources are available upon request, I can just mention that I tested them 
(in addition to renderers on Linux) with Adobe SVG plugin on WIndows, and 
they are rendered ok.

|
|   but
|   those libs are not ready yet.

All SVG renderers are "not-ready-yet".
For example, Adobe SVG plugin freezes my WIndows from time to time.

|
|  Are there viewers/browsers/players in the works using these libs?

* xsvg is X-based (XFree86-based) viewer/renderer using libsvg and libxrsvg.
* GNOME2's Eye of Gnome (image viewer) and  Nautilus2 utilize librsvg2 to 
render SVG in GNOME/GTK environment
* there is a 'ksvgtopng' application (part of kdelibs from KDE 3.1) which 
converts SVG to PNG. It shares a lot of code with KSVG.

There is a discussion at a moment about possibility to migrate some of those 
toolkits to libsvg/Xr/Xc.
One of advantage this can provide is hardware-accelerated rendering (in 
particular, for SVG).
If you are interested to discuss such topics - pls subscribe to XSVG list.  
:-)

|
|  If so, perhaps they could submit test suite results, so SVG developers
|  and users can see what they support.
|
|     http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/Test/
|     (results table not yet linked; check again soon)

Good idea.
Some preliminary results are at:
       http://keithp.com/~cworth/svg/conformance/
But note: we are speaking about *beta* releases (and, to be precise, there is 
no release for XSVG yet, it's recommended to use CVS instead of tarballs)

Anyway, we would appreciate more people joining this project, and contributing 
(not only code but help, docs, experience/advises, etc.)

|
|  Tobi

-- 
Best Regards,

Vadim Plessky
SVG Icons
http://svgicons.sourceforge.net

Received on Wednesday, 20 November 2002 07:14:58 UTC