Re: IBM and SVG?

On Wednesday, October 30, 2002, 10:06:19 AM, AndrewWatt2001 wrote:


Aac> In Chris Lilley's Foreword in SVG Unleashed he mentions that IBM had a 
Aac> prototype SVG implementation as far back as 1999.

That is correct.

The first ever implementation of SVG, that I am aware of, was from
BlackDirt, in Java. They had a WMF to SVG converter - it basically did solid
filled polygons with solid stroke - and they did a little SVG viewer
to go with it, which only really understood polygons. They also did
paths, but only with straight line commands.

IBM, who were on the first SVG working group from the start, had what
is probably the second SVG implementation (also in Java). This was
used for testing out if ideas - it had started life as a PGML viewer -
so for example we could test out different path syntaxes and seethe
effect on file size, compressed file size, DOM size, and so on.

Aac> Does anyone know what happened to it?

After a while as an internal project, it became available for free
download from the IBM AlphaWorks site, which has a lot of free
software.
http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/svgview

Once again, it was couple with a converter project - in this case from
CGM, and from AFP (an IBM mainframe print format). The two guys from
IBM (Kelvin Lawrence and Mike Paciello)worked had to get it to be
available, and to be open source.

Over time, it seems that the funding changed or the focus changed, or
the people were moved to other projects, so it was no longer
developed. It was never updated from the March 2000 working draft.

Kelvin Lawrence, the lead on the project, was already well known in
the Java and Graphics community at the start of SVG
http://www.softwaresummit.com/1998/1998/speakers/lawrence.htm
and is now the IBM  CTO for XML Technology
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/speakers/lawrence/

Aac> Did it, for example, end up at the Apache Foundation? Was it the
Aac> foundation of Batik?

Batik pulled together contributions from a number of different Java
SVG implementations, including those from CSIRO, IBM, ILOG, Sun
(Java2D to SVG) SteadyState (TTF2SVG) and Bull/INRIA (Jackaroo).

Aac> If it wasn't, or even if it was, can someone spell out the
Aac> origins and early development of the Batik project?

I should probably let the Batik guys give a fuller answer on that.

-- 
 Chris                            mailto:chris@w3.org

Received on Wednesday, 30 October 2002 12:35:52 UTC