The W3C has approved the lastest version of the SVG specification, along with a mobile-targeted subset. Expect smaller, richer, cooler graphics on your handheld and cell phone soon.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has approved the long-awaited Scalable Vector Graphics 1.1 (SVG 1.1) and SVG Mobile Profiles as Technical Recommendations. The SVG 1.1 specification fully modularizes the SVG spec, while Mobile SVG supports a subset of SVG 1.1 designed to best make use of the features on handheld devices.
The graphical capabilities of SVG 1.1 are the same as those of the widely implemented SVG 1.0 , which has been a W3C Recommendation since 4 September 2001. What has changed is the way the language is defined. For SVG 1.0, the Document Type Definition (DTD) was a single, monolithic unit. In SVG 1.1, the DTD is divided up into smaller, more flexible functional building blocks that can be reassembled in different ways for different purposes. The SVG Working Group used the same modularization techniques as used by the HTML Working Group for XHTML modularization.
The advantage of such modularization is the ability to easily mix-and-match portions of the specification as needed. SVG Mobile, for instance, defines two different subsets of SVG supporting different components, SVG Tiny, aimed at multimedia capable cell phones such as the recently announced 3G units, and SVG Basic for handheld and palmtop computers. Each supports a smaller, more limited feature set than the full SVG specification, but because they are direct subsets fully compliant SVG viewers can view SVT Tiny and SVG Basic as well. For example, SVG Tiny leaves out advanced (and processor-intensive) shading and filtering effects, while SVG Basic supports only a select few.
Commercial services using SVG Mobile are now being deployed, including location based services using geographical metadata embedded in the SVG. Fifteen implementations were tested in November 2002, including SVG Tiny implementations from Bitflash, CSIRO, KDDI, Nokia, ZOOMON and SVG Basic implementations from Bitflash, CSIRO, and Intesis; others were also under development but were not tested at that time. Conformance to one of the two profiles, rather than each manufacturer choosing their own subset, ensures widespread interoperability of content across mobile devices from different manufacturers, thus lowering content development cost while ensuring widespread deployment that does not depend on the single source of supply of proprietary alternatives.
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