 | Level: Intermediate Contributors: W3C 06 Feb 2007
Updated 25 Apr 2007 Use Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), a vector graphics
language, to describe two-dimensional vector graphics. Discover what's
included in the SVG feature set, and learn about its relationship to
Document Object Model (DOM), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), XHTML, and
more.
Scalable Vector
Graphics (SVG) 1.1
[W3C Recommendation] is a language for describing
two-dimensional graphics. It is primarily a vector graphics
language, though some raster graphics features are available. SVG
has the remarkable ambition of providing a practical and flexible
graphics format that's represented in the notoriously verbose XML, and
it has been quite successful in this. SVG's feature set includes nested
transformations, clipping paths, alpha masks, raster filter effects,
template objects, and, of course, extensibility. SVG also supports
animation, zooming and panning views, a wide variety of graphic
primitives, grouping, scripting, hyperlinks, structured metadata, CSS, a specialized DOM superset, and easy embedding in other XML
documents. Some of the design choices in SVG have been mildly
controversial, including the fact that vector paths are expressed as
space-delimited lists of numbers within individual attributes, but in
the main SVG have been one of the most widely and warmly embraced XML
applications. The specification has been translated to several languages.
SVG 1.1 is modularized in a similar fashion to XHTML
1.1+. This modularization allows for extension of SVG, and even
reduction of SVG, as practiced in
Mobile
SVG Profiles: SVG Tiny and SVG Basic
[W3C Recommendation], which define reduced sets of
SVG modules that are suitable for mobile phones and personal digital
assistants (PDAs).
SVG 1.2
[in development] looks to add a whole spectrum of
new tools that would make SVG a full-blown application platform in
addition to a graphics format.
Resources
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