In the midst of Adobe purchasing Macromedia, thereby putting in question the Final Fate of Flash and the success of SVG, I decided to check out the W3C SVG site. No reaction yet there (and I guess there wouldn't be, they are a standards body, not a bunch of gossip columnists/business theorists). However, I did notice that they put up a new Working Draft document for SVG 1.2 about a week ago.

The new document is only an outline, as the complete document is not ready for publication but it does state a reorganization of documentation for SVG in the future. In the past SVG 1.1 Full was expressed here and the SVG 1.1 Tiny and Mobile profiles were specified as subsets of SVG 1.1 Full. To understand the Tiny/Mobile profiles you had to reference the Full specification.

Previous editions of SVG 1.2 Full were expressed as an extension to SVG 1.1 Full, but where it got ugly was that SVG 1.2 Tiny was expressed as a subset of SVG 1.2 Full (which means to understand SVG 1.2 Tiny you had to understand SVG 1.1 Full and SVG 1.2 Full). Based on complaints, they have decided to restructure the SVG 1.2 documents such that:

- SVG 1.2 Tiny will be expressed "as a complete language specification"
- SVG 1.2 Full will be expressed as an extension to SVG 1.2 Tiny

This seems to make better sense, since SVG Tiny is simpler and can be considered a "starting point" in your journey to understanding SVG. However, it also made me ponder if it is subtly indicating a shift in the focus of SVG for the mobile market. i.e. Has W3C realized that they will be more successful targetting that area (while still providing the "Full" browser-based language as an add-on in case browsers ever get around to implementing it)? Then again, it could just be an indication that there are a lot more developers on the Tiny/Mobile side right now that have swayed opinions on the SVG Working Group...

§84 · April 19, 2005 · Software, SVG, Technology, Web · · [Print]

Leave a Comment to “Oh SVG 1.2, Where Art Thou?”

  1. Rob says:

    Definitely sounds like a shift in the focus from previous standards. So maybe Opera can get ahead of the curve since they’ve already trimmed the fat and gone with SVG Tiny.