SVG

Introduction

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is an XML specification and file format for describing two-dimensional vector graphics, both static and animated. SVG can be purely declarative or may include scripting. Images can contain hyperlinks using outbound simple XLinks. It is an open standard created by the World Wide Web Consortium's SVG Working Group.

History

SVG was developed by the W3C SVG Working Group starting in 1998, after Macromedia and Microsoft introduced Vector Markup Language (VML) whereas Adobe Systems and Sun Microsystems submitted a competing format known as PGML. The working group was chaired by Chris Lilley of the W3C.

SVG 1.0 became a W3C Recommendation on September 4, 2001.

SVG 1.1 became a W3C Recommendation on January 14, 2003. The SVG 1.1 specification is modularized in order to allow subsets to be defined as profiles. Apart from this, there is very little difference between SVG 1.1 and SVG 1.0.

SVG Tiny and SVG Basic (the Mobile SVG Profiles) became W3C Recommendations on January 14, 2003. These are described as profiles of SVG 1.1.

SVG Tiny 1.2 became a W3C Candidate Recommendation on August 10, 2006. SVG Full 1.2 is a W3C Working Draft. SVG Tiny 1.2 was initially released as a profile, and later refactored to be a complete specification, including all needed parts of SVG 1.1 and SVG 1.2. A similarly refactored draft for SVG 1.2 Full has not yet been released. A notable feature addition in the SVG Full 1.2 W3C Working Draft (absent from SVG Tiny 1.2) is syntax for multipage documents; the semantics of multiple pages with respect to non-hardcopy rendering are however undefined.