SVG And The Free Desktop(s) 337
A user writes "Christian Schaller has written an interesting article on SVG's current and possible uses on the GNU/Linux desktop. Though the article concentrates mostly on GNOME, it does mention the excellent work the KDE developers have been doing with KSVG, and refers to the upcoming SVG support in Mozilla too."
if (SVG = Flash) .... (Score:5, Interesting)
Scalable graphics fill a niche (Score:5, Interesting)
SVG is the best thing ever! (Score:5, Interesting)
SVG is finding its way into everything, browsers, icons, etc. I forsee a world where SVG is dominant and regular pixel based images are seen as WAV files as in comparison to MIDI.
As a matter of fact that is a good analogy: MIDI vs WAV. One is intrections on how to draw the other is the final outcome.
Imagine how many songs you could fit on a CD if it were midi, with human voice parameters. Ignoring the vocals, you'd get thousands of songs on a CD.
SVG also fixes the pixelation issue, whenyou try to stretch and compress the image. As a matter of fact, do that once with a regualr image and you're working with crap. You can shrink SVG blow it up, and rotate without any kind of distortion.
It is kind of suprising it took us this long to get a cross-platform standard on how to specify how to draw shapes! But it is a good thing.
I don't think computers will ever be the same once SVG takes off.
Vector graphics on the dekstop (Score:5, Interesting)
SVG looks fun (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:SVG & Steganogrpahy? (Score:2, Interesting)
But XML does give you plenty of potential hiding places for data (e.g. white-space)
Best viewed on a vector display (Score:2, Interesting)
vector display. However, where could you
get a modern vector display nowadays?
They used to sell arcade machines (battlezone)
and game consoles (vectrix) with these
displays.
Music notation and SVG? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:SVG is the best thing ever! (Addendum) (Score:5, Interesting)
I was more referring about the costs to a computer of using them.
However if you do compare SVG icons to Bit-map icons, visually, the SVG icon will not only be simpler, and usually just as apealing.
Look at the SVG icon sets referenced and the background of Slax (Slackware's LiveCD) The #1 comment is "aww he's so cute". Clearly, the visual accptance is much higher to the human eye than MIDI's acceptance to the human ear.
MIDI could be re-invented to include wavelets which are a base representation of a voice (instrument or human) then define the mathmatical operations. You'd get a 99% facimilie that would probably pass as good as a low-quality MP3 at 1/0th the size.
Example (as SVG):
Now human voices are harder, but once downloaded you could just download the contents of the tree.
You could also hear brittney sing "Opps.." in her original voice or her aged voice, which would be interesting. Or even make Christina Agulera sing Spear's songs.
If you're seeing the potential of re-defining MIDI like that, surely you can see hwo awesome SVG is...
Re:SVG looks fun (Score:4, Interesting)
Full disclosure, I did a SVG tileset for GNOME Mahjongg [rahga.com]... To make a rectangle that fits your description, just add <rect x="0" y="0" width="50" height="50" fill="#0000FF" stroke-width="5">
As far as XML goes, I can't even begin to tell you how wonderful xmllint is in what I do with SVG, how nice it is to be able to automate the creation of certain SVGs with perl scripts, and the aid provided by typical tools such as sed. Most of us have not yet even started to exploit CSS. Anyway, doing the same in a non-xml format, to me, would be a nightmare.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
as a windowmanager and no additional "desktop"
bloat means that I don't have a desktop
or a full GNU/Linux installation?
That is retarded.
I would suggest that GNU/Linux is (generally)
everything in your list up and including to Xwindows and some windowmanager. The desktop
stuff like KDE and GNOME are just further enhancements on top of the windowmanager.
But they should "never" be considered an
essential part of a GNU/Linux system.
Re:Yay SVG! (Score:1, Interesting)
SVG is great for GIS (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Vector graphics on the dekstop (Score:5, Interesting)
You have a very interesting point there. I think having one menu with all programs in it is a Good Thing, but I strongly believe GNOME and KDE have it because Windows has it. I guess the idea is to make the system accessible to switchers by cloning the behavior, but I do not see that as the right approach. I believe in making a better system for those who choose to use it.
I don't care how many people use an open source OS and whether or not Fred Foobar would switch if we do or don't have the same buttons on our windows in the same places. If you do care about market share, you should realize that you can't beat MicroSoft by cloning them - they will always stay ahead of you. Even if you have higher quality and stability and useful features, people are going to complain that the VBScript in some webpage doesn't work or they can't open their Excel database; you just can't convert them all.
Meanwhile, I think we should innovate. Let's take advantage of Reiser4 and develop a set of utilities to make the most of extended attributes. Let's work on ZeroConf and IPv6, making our systems ready for painless networking. Let's integrate the shell and the programming language, so we can use functions from shared libraries in the shell and have sudo-like access control for function calls (no more running the whole program as r00t because it needs to do one priviliged thing). Or anything else you come up with.
Re:if (SVG = Flash) .... (Score:4, Interesting)
Now why would PDF need replacement?
I bet any PDF page will have a smaller file size and better performance than the SVG equivalent.
Not to mention EPS.
Re:The next Flash (Score:1, Interesting)
There is also the Batik SVG Toolkit [apache.org]
Re:Vector graphics on the dekstop (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure as hell you can beat Microsoft by cloning their interface. People aren't leaving Windows because KDE or Gnome are so pretty [IMHO, they have gone from a depressing barebone ugliness to a godawful all-colorful all-curvy kindergarten look, but that's just me] but because the computer becomes more stable, they feel they have control over the system, security improves, and -- most importantly -- it's cheaper.
The desktop needs to be just good enough, not any fancier than Windows, and Microsoft will see shrinking profits. (Eventually, no they won't disappear, they'll start selling a Linux distro with "MS added value", yeah special built-in apps with patented technology and proprietary file formats.)
Re:stupid acronyms (Score:4, Interesting)
Inkscape & Animation (Score:3, Interesting)
Well... for Inkscape [inkscape.org] I know that it's high up on the lists for some of the developers, and several of them are actually investigating various factors now.
Animation and scripting support are two things that may go in hand-in-hand, but definitely are being worked on. Of course, since it's open source, there's no hard timeline for supporting it, but I would not be supprised to see it in the CVS versions in the next quarter. The internals are being reworked now in a way that will facilitate that better.
Re:wave of the future (Score:3, Interesting)
You'll notice it's the RPC folks who are most interested in a binary XML representation.
Re:Inkscape & Animation (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not expecting to see any serious movement on animation for another few quarters yet (there's still some serious design work to do in that area), but OTOH my colleagues keep surprising me, so you never know... ^_^
Re:Vector graphics on the dekstop (Score:3, Interesting)
That's exactly what I meant: people switch from Windows not because they want a partial implementation of what Windows has, but because they want what Windows _doesn't_ give them.
Re:Inkscape & Animation (Score:2, Interesting)
Interactive data visualizations with SVG (Score:2, Interesting)
SVG is a perfect format for interactive visualizations of dynamic data.
For example, here is an interactive genealogical data visualization [mycgiserver.com] that was produced using XSLT transformations and published as a RESTful service via a Java servlet. The sourceforge project has more information on how the visualization was produced [sourceforge.net].
Use SVG as a medium to visually repurpose data to create your own interpretation of the world!
Re:Why Vector Graphics matter (Score:4, Interesting)
1280x1024 (~96 dpi), I can't see individual pixels as dinguished from diagonally adjacent pixels unless I'm at half my normal viewing distance for the monitor. For printed text, you generally hold the book closer to your face, so you want better resolution.
I think that the relation will actually go the other direction; when you can size windows to fit what you're doing, there will be more call for being able to resolve details in small windows, and therefore call for better monitors. As it is, increasing a monitor's resolution, as you said, makes everything smaller and harder to see, so people wouldn't run their monitors at higher resolutions even if they were available.