SVG working group

The SVG working group is a working group appointed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to respond to the demand for an alternative to the PostScript document format. The PostScript format was unable to create scalable fonts and objects without making the files that were created many times larger than a file using only non-scalable fonts and objects.

In April 1998, the W3C received a comment from four company representatives, including Adobe Inc. , IBM , Netscape and Sun Microsystems, regarding the Precision Graphics Markup Language , or PGML - an XML -based markup language .

A second message came a month later from a team that included representatives from Hewlett-Packard , Macromedia , Microsoft and Visio ; the note dealt with the use of VML , an XML-based vector markup language .

As a result of both letters, the W3C set up a working group and within six months a working draft with requirements for the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format was published. Unlike the one that uses PostScript, this language is optimized for Internet use. It enables the description of two-dimensional graphics and graphics applications using XML.

Members

Members of the SVG working group are representatives of the following organizations:

• Adobe Inc.
• Apple
• Open Text (BitFlash Division)
• Canon , Inc.
• ERCIM
• Ericsson
• Expway
• France Telecom
• Groupe des Écoles des Télécommunications
• Ikivo AB
• ILOG
• ITEDO Software GmbH
• KDDI Corporation
• Keio University
• Microsoft
• Mozilla
• Nokia
• Opera software
• Research In Motion , Ltd. (RIM)
• Sharp Corporation
• Sun Microsystems Inc.

The W3C has also invited some experts to take part in the working group.

Web links

• official page
• SVG Charter
• SVG roadmap
• SVG Brings Fast Vector Graphics to Web