[OpenFontLibrary] SVG Support

[Schrijver]

Well actually the Adobe one is EOL

http://www.adobe.com/svg/eol.html

Don't like the rhetorics of that url :-(

The most common approach I believe people use nowadays to accomplish  
cross browser vector graphics is by using  a Javascript layer that  
translates into VML, which like WEFT is another technological  
anachronism resting inside IE's render engine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_Markup_Language

> Vector Markup Language (VML) is an XML language used to produce  
> vector graphics. VML was submitted as a proposed standard to the W3C  
> in 1998 by Microsoft, Macromedia, and others. Around the same time  
> other competing W3C submissions were received in the area of web  
> vector graphics, such as PGML from Adobe, Sun, and others.[1]
> As a result of these submissions, a new W3C working group was  
> created, which produced SVG.
> Even though largely ignored by developers, Microsoft still  
> implemented VML into Internet Explorer 5.0 and higher and in  
> Microsoft Office 2000 and higher.
> Google Maps currently uses VML for rendering vectors when running on  
> Internet Explorer 5.5+, and SVG on other browsers.[2]


One way this is achieved is by using the CANVAS tag with additional JS  
for IE, and recently a JavaScript library has gained some traction in  
which you construct vector graphics with scripts: http://www.raphaeljs.com/

I’m seeing *very* little raw SVG on the web. But I completely agree:

> The more SVg is used on the Web, the more pressure there is on
> Microsoft to support it natively, too.

Because all this clientside hassle seems like a terrible kludge  
compared to embedding SVG in XHTML.

https://developer.mozilla.org/presentations/xtech2005/svg-canvas/SVGDemo.xml

I do like the idea of serving SVG to supporting clients and VML to IE,  
because it shows SVG is a must have, but I’d much rather be doing this  
on the serverside.

I'm curious to hear what you think of this approach:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/vectorconverter/
These guys wrote XSLT to transform SVG into VML on the serverside.  
They wrapped it all in PHP and present it as a stand alone app which I  
think is a silly approach. But their XSLT should be usable in itself,  
though somebody who speaks Italian might want to translate the  
comments in their source code :-)

Eric
_____
art directing the internet in 2009
http://authoritism.ericschrijver.nl



> Considering that Microsoft has not updated WEFT or their knowledgebase
> pages since 2005, I'm wondering how much longer EOT will be supported.
> It could be one of those technologies that gets silently dropped
> during the next IE go-round.



-Usi

I believe embedded SVG is the way to go, as it allows you


Op 10 feb 2009, om 02:44 heeft Liam R E Quin het volgende geschreven:

> On Mon, 2009-02-09 at 20:32 -0500, Fontfreedom at aol.com wrote:
>> I have to point out:
>>
>> SVG files can't be opened with MSIE, and MSIE is the most dominant
>> browser on the web...
>
> There are some widespread plugins that let IE open SVG -- Acrobat
> used to install the Adobe one, not sure if it still does.
>
> The more SVg is used on the Web, the more pressure there is on
> Microsoft to support it natively, too.
>
> Liam
>
>>
> -- 
> Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
> Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
> Ankh: irc.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org www.advogato.org