Re: SVGZ support - why isn't there any?

Thomas,

There are a lot of options out of Illustrator to save pretty compact SVG files without compression… removing Illustrator file data, reducing precision, using Illustrator (or the better Astute Graphics plugin) to non-destructively simplify paths, save as tiny SVG, etc..  Using these techniques you can often get images, like a chart, to be smaller in SVG than in pixels.  This can produce very small SVG files that have such density of data that further compression might not be as effective as on a ‘fatter’ SVG file.

I’m not sure what the use case would be for non-web, file based access to SVG files other than opening them up in an editor.  Compression is not likely to be needed for this.

If you had an extremely complex diagram or set of diagrams that you wanted to host via web page, such as the entire maintenance manual for a Boeing 747-8, and you wanted the images to be in SVG format… then you might be wondering about compression.  I recall from A&P school the 747 maintenance manual in printed form was about 20 feet thick and probably had > 10K diagrams.  But even in this use case I would think that the use case for SVGZ would be limited.  You could load 100,000 1MB SVG images into RAM on web server startup.   We routinely deliver 25MB data files from memory via web sockets to web clients in < 2 seconds.  In other words, other architectural solutions might compensate for lack of SVGZ support.

So, yes, SVGZ support would be nice, but I’m struggling to think of an essential use case.  I’d love to hear one though.

David Jacopille
MFS Investment Management
Boston, MA
617-954-5326

From: "Smailus (US), Thomas O" <Thomas.O.Smailus@boeing.com>
Date: Thursday, October 19, 2023 at 7:21 PM
To: "www-svg@w3.org" <www-svg@w3.org>
Subject: SVGZ support - why isn't there any?
Resent-From: <www-svg@w3.org>
Resent-Date: Thursday, October 19, 2023 at 7:20 PM

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In a case of, why way does this now not work?  I’m wondering why now (for some years) none of the main web browser engines (which are the defacto SVG display engines) do not support SVGZ, the compressed SVG format?

Is this a case of not seeing there are indeed use cases they are ignoring, or a case of the developers not being cognizant of the state of SVG usage outside of web server delivered content?

There is a real need for supporting SVGZ from FILE: protocol, as a lot of SVG graphics are stored on file systems and accessed locally without any service or web server involvement.


--
Thomas Smailus, Ph.D., P.E., F.NSPE
Senior Advanced Information Technologist
Boeing Information Technology
SVG Forum CoP Lead | Intelligent Graphics SVG Lead
EO&T LEAP - 2011 / BR&T HIPO - Cadre 1
The Boeing Company; P.O. Box 3707 MC 2H-52; Seattle, WA 98124-2207
Email: thomas.o.smailus@boeing.com       Tel: 425/373-2850        Fax: 425/865-5791




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