Re: Wikipedia CTO speaks on SVG

On Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:42:14 +0100, Jeff Schiller <codedread@gmail.com>  
wrote:

>
> I do agree that SVGs displayed directly in the article would be a good
> thing eventually.  However, I think I agree with the decision not to
> turn on SVG natively directly inside articles, their server-side
> rasterization saves client-side time/headaches:
>
> 1) rendering SVG is more expensive than rendering PNG (until vector
> graphic hardware acceleration gets to the desktop)

There are always cases where that isn't true, and it depends on if you  
count time it might take to transfer the files.

> 2) there are still differences between the quality of renderings
> between the three major browsers supporting it (animation only
> supported in one atm)

Do you have any particular examples that shows the quality differences?

> 3) means of displaying SVGs in IE remain sketchy (unsupported plugin
> from Adobe, the silent Renesis folks)

It's entirely possible to have fallback content.

> 4) stripping potentially maliscious code is not as simple as stripping
> script tags
>
> Plus, you can get to the native SVG just by clicking through a couple
> links (from article to image, from image to SVG link):
>   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svg ->
>     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Bitmap_VS_SVG.svg (raster shown
> despite the confusing URL) ->
>       http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Bitmap_VS_SVG.svg
> (actual SVG rendered directly in most browsers)
>
> Also I had a question - does MediaWiki (the software that Wikipedia
> runs on) support displaying SVGs on the client side inside articles?
> I know I should probably ask this question elsewhere, but I was just
> curious.

I was actually trying out some mediawiki svg hacks like that a while back.  
I have to say though, I wouldn't like to have SVG (or arbitrary HTML for  
that matter) enabled without stripping away the scripts if I was running a  
wiki. And I agree with you Jeff, it may not even be that simple if you  
want to be on the safe side.

Cheers
/Erik

-- 
Erik Dahlstrom, Core Technology Developer, Opera Software
http://my.opera.com/macdev_ed

Received on Thursday, 17 January 2008 16:12:19 UTC