Microsoft Wants To Participate In SVG Development 292
rossendryv writes "After many years of fighting against the standard, Microsoft announced they are joining the WC3's SVG working group to help with the development of SVG. 'We recognize that vector graphics are an important component of the next-generation Web platform,' said Patrick Dengler, senior program manager on Microsoft's Internet Explorer team in a blog post."
LOL. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Funny, funny.
Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Your point is well taken. But don't count Silverlight out yet. The sole fact that Netflix uses it for their streaming service is reason enough.
-Peter
Re:Translation: (Score:4, Insightful)
Your point is well taken. But don't count Silverlight out yet. The sole fact that Netflix uses it for their streaming service is reason enough.
-Peter
Which is the sole reason I dont use NetFlix. Or watch videos on Microsoft's site.
Re:Translation: (Score:4, Insightful)
While I can identify with your position, if boycotts by the technologically conscious were by any means effective, Internet Explorer would have shriveled and died in the '90s.
-Peter
Re:Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
I do hope they don't join just to ruin the standard or offer halfassed support for it.
Why else *would* they join?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, in addition to those reasons, perhaps they want to figure out how best to easily support doing vector graphics from the programming tricks they can learn from others involved with SVG.
It wouldn't be the first time they borrowed code from elsewhere to try to improve their own product...
For instance... Intuit/(Money?), Stac Electronics for disk compression, the BSD stack (which they somehow managed to mangle the use of), much of Stardock's window dressing for XP (and all later versions of Windows), a
Re:Translation: (Score:4, Interesting)
Which is the sole reason I dont use NetFlix. Or watch videos on Microsoft's site.
I've seen this response many times, yet I have never seen a reasonable explanation for the boycott. Do you hate Silverlight because it's Microsoft or is there something wrong with the technology that has made you stay away?
I have limited exposure to the Bing Video [bing.com] site, but with that limited exposure, I have had nothing but positive experiences. I've experienced no problem streaming HD content, for example. YouTube, on the other hand, struggled badly to stream 720P content through my FiOS connection running at 25 Mb/sec (both up and down).
From an architectural / security standpoint, Silverlight runs in a Sandbox, among other things, which greatly improve security (this most certainly isn't another Active X). Additionally, as a developer, I feel that C# is a better language than AS 3. I don't know any designers that have worked in Expression Blend [microsoft.com], so I can't comment on their vantage point. I welcome their comments, however.
Re:Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
You know what improves security and performance? Streaming a damn MPEG file and let us decode it with our plugin of choice. Flash and Silverlight are a terrible choice for videos.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This should not be a problem with the tag. You can use javascript to apply all sorts of transformations live to the streaming video.
Check this one out for instance: http://www.zachstronaut.com/lab/isocube.html [zachstronaut.com] (Firefox 3.5)
And this video demonstration of Firefox 3.5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tLBLVtIk3A [youtube.com]
Re:Translation: (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, I can't see a single problem with Silverlight that doesn't exist within flash, including "OtherOS" support. We all know what Adobe is like when it comes to supporting 64bit Linux.
Then again, I honestly haven't had much use for flash over the last couple of years other than watching videos, something I'm hoping that will accomplish just as well. The only times I've needed flash other than this were when certain websites have, quite literally, forced me to use it, usually as part of some rediculous sign up process.
Silverlight is in much the same boat, albeit with a much smaller usage so I don't really see why people dislike it so much. It's no better or worse than flash, but at least it's a competitor, which one day might help the situation.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is the sole reason I dont use NetFlix. Or watch videos on Microsoft's site.
I've seen this response many times, yet I have never seen a reasonable explanation for the boycott. Do you hate Silverlight because it's Microsoft or is there something wrong with the technology that has made you stay away?
In my case: It doesn't work with my OS.
Whether or not that constitutes "something wrong with the technology" is something of a point of contention between me and Microsoft.
Why silverlight is hated (Score:5, Insightful)
All the browsers except one (go ahead, guess which one) are becoming capable enough to do a lot of animation and tricks that people used to put in flash, themselves.
Flash itself is hated because it ruins the web, it locks up data in an executable that can't be indexed.
And then, MS comes along and rather then improve its browser to support standards, it adds a flash copy. Who needs it? Do we REALLY want to go back to the days of the web bubble where you had a dozen plugins begging to be installed? Bad enough that flash survived, we don't need a new one.
It also ruins the browser experience for those who have trouble with sight. The rest of the web can be spoken or enlarged or contrast changed (not IE) but that doesn't work for plugins.
The only use I seen for silverlight is to embed video. Why introduce yet another closed source player when it would have been trivial for MS to just support the video tag.
Make no mistake, silverlight is nothing more then activex 2.0. Yet another attempt by MS to turn the browser into a windows only experience.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
silverlight runs on mac, windows (also on firefox), and linux (via moonlight).
[cut-n-paste of a response I made above here]
Moonlight doesn't, probably can't, so likely never will, support the Silverlight DRM codecs (that DRM is required by Netflix, and practically every other Silverlight website), thus, for this topic at least, Moonlight != Silverlight.
Both Adobe and Microsoft have made great leaps in the recent years to make these extension models (which is really what they are) of the browsers more powerful.
There is one crucial difference though: DRMed Flash works on my OS, Silverlight does not. All other technical details are irrelevant.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Really - show me a site that supports moonlight's dated version of silverlight.
Show me what microsoft has done to help the linux folks out on pushing mono to 3.5 (or 3.0) so that we can get that support.
I can watch hulu and youtube with no problems on my 64 bit machine. I cannot watch netflix.
Here's Why (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you hate Silverlight because it's Microsoft
It's reason enough.
After observing a few decades anticompetitive behavior, punctuated with six years during which they utterly and completely neglected Internet Explorer -- the world's primary window to the web -- two things seem pretty apparent to me:
1) Despite all their talk about developers, developers, developers, when they can get away with it, they care about developers not one bit. If they did, some minimal effort towards fixing some of the more egregious problems with IE might have been made, instead of pushing the problems out onto the backs of hundreds of thousands of web authors who had to figure out how to circumvent bugs and irregularities.
2) It's quite likely they'd like pull an embrace-extend-extinguish with the web as whole if they can pull it off. And if they get critical mass for RIAs with Silverlight, they might even be able to pull it off. I don't care how good Silverlight is -- and I've been impressed with some things -- I'm not at all interested in that future.
Silverlight is the fastest growing plugin... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Silverlight is the fastest growing plugin... (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe, but that little chart is in Flash.
Re:Silverlight is the fastest growing plugin... (Score:4, Insightful)
I never did figure out what Silverlight was for. I went to one site that required it (cant even remember what the site was for), tried to install it but it refused to work.
Never found a need for it since.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No. I've just never (except once) come across it. Maybe it is completely unpopular and not used. Maybe the name is non-descriptive. Maybe it's pointless as other plugins do whatever its supposed to do.
Maybe I have better things to do rather than track down the latest crap fad.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Motivation (Score:3, Interesting)
That's probably part of it, but I wonder if the fact that Microsoft is trying to play in the tablet space -- where reading ebooks is a key application -- and SVG support is required for conformant .epub readers (with .epub is increasingly dominant for ebooks) might be a factor.
Re:Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
So, we'll implement something we'll call SVG, but only once the spec is changed to support Microsoft-only technologies.
Like, say, that it must be implemented as an ActiveX control...
Re:Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
It's certainly a nice thought (for them), but it won't work. As goes YouTube, so goes the Internet. Nothing Microsoft can do about that. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if IE9 at a bare minimum supports <video> and <audio> It's such a simple thing to hack into the engine that even they should be able to pull it off without any fuss.
SVG, that's a bit trickier, but they do have that VML renderer lying around.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
.SVG will really open up the CAD market as well, so watch out for Autodesk, in fact they will suffer farm more harm than M$.
SVG, if wildly successful, will have no impact on AutoCAD, very little impact on any other Autdesk product.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Its likely that they will work and being the defaco SVG viewer for the windows platform and initally do some good work thus making it pointless for anyone else to continue to develop a svg viewer for the windows platform.. once they have established themselves.. they will undoubtedly start to add "Features" to svg that require MS API's... Much like they did with java..
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Coming soon to a computer near you: "MSSVG; it's almost SVG!"
Oh, I can't wait to find out what all the neato, Windows-specific incompatibilities are going to be!
I was kinda happy with MS not joining in any standards, atleast that way the standards remain standard.
Oh thank you so very much.... NOT (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure their help will be just like that they gave to the development of OpenGL.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Oh thank you so very much.... NOT (Score:5, Informative)
It was probably about getting OOXML to become an ISO standard that only MS could comply with...
"In order to gain ISO approval, Microsoft needed to garner the requisite number of “P” votes, and the influx of many new “P” voting members, most of whom were in favour of OOXML, was striking."
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/microsoft-ooxml-and-iso [linuxjournal.com]
Re:Oh thank you so very much.... NOT (Score:5, Insightful)
Step 1: Embrace />
Status: In Progress <laughter type="maniacal"
Step 2: Extend
Status: Inevitable
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Or in XAML: <Laughter Voice="{Binding Type:Evil}" EmbraceExtendExtinguish.Stage="Embrace"><Intonation.Type>Manical</Intonation.Type></Laughter>.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Or HTML.
We should make pictures similar to the John Locke fucks things up (expand gallery) [encycloped...matica.com] ones, but with Microsoft in the middle picture. ;)
Torpedo? (Score:5, Funny)
I don't really know how the W3C is organized, but shouldn't there be some protection against allowing organizations who are openly hostile toward a technology from sitting on the committee? Isn't this just common sense?
Who do they think they are? The UN?
-Peter
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, microsoft's recent track record with the W3C is quite positive. In IE8 they implemented full support for CSS 2.1 (they even released a large test suite to help the other browsers improve their CSS 2.1 support) and a decent level of support for WAI ARIA (accessibility spec). They also looked ahead and implemented native json encoding/decoding (part of HTML5), and the web storage spec (yet to be finalized). And they've contributed positively to the HTML5 working group.
So really, if you look at the p
Re: (Score:2)
Cute troll.
For the benefit of those who might be led astray by your post:
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
By making inflammatory statements that you can't be reasonably assumed to actually believe. (Please note that your intent doesn't matter. If you're just crazy, the post is still a troll.)
A beautiful case in point. I've done nothing to make you feel so persecuted. So, either you're a nut job with a persecution complex, or your playing hurt as part of a troll. Make sense?
Of course the answer to your r
Re: (Score:2)
So... By your logic. Who should be able to contribute.... I haven't really found a good OS yet...
Those people and companies who either plan to, or do, already support the standard they want on the board to submit changes to.
Why should Microsoft get a say-so in how SVG development goes when they openly state they will not add it to IE?
Let them update IE to something more recent than 10 year old tech, and people MIGHT listen a little more to their opinions and desires (Thou probably not many more)
Re:Torpedo? (Score:4, Informative)
xBSD junk See linux but with a worse UI.
BSD runs the same xorg/KDE/Gnome as Linux, not a worse UI, the SAME bad UI.
If you want to criticize it you should be complaining about it's lesser hardware compatibility (in terms of multimedia, etc) or less features (eg. no clustered file system/DRBD equivalent).
Re: (Score:2)
I run lynx you insensitive clod.
This Should Be Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
So you basically want a say in which direction the spec takes from now on without having proven to anyone that you are truly committed to this?
Or is this some hilarious attempt to sidle in at the last moment and hope everyone forgets about your blatant disregard for SVG and make it seem like SVG had always been in your plans but you're only now just getting around to it?
I mean, you're looking mighty foolish now no matter which route you take.
All that angst and animosity aside, I applaud this action. Get it implemented in IE right now so I can start writing crap that utilizes basic graphics without having to post an unnecessarily large image for a flow chart and we can start to carve down the Flash usage out there.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft is a big monolithic company; they don't move quickly. If they put SVG in IE9 everyone will benifit. I think this will lead to good things for SVG.
Re:This Should Be Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Until Microsoft commits to supporting SVG in IE it is hard to see Microsoft's supposed support of the standard as anything but disingenuous. As you point out, Microsoft's position at this point is ridiculous. Not only has Microsoft been actively promoting an SVG competitor, but the primary reason why SVG isn't ubiquitous is the fact that SVG is not supported in Internet Explorer.
BSD licensed implementation? (Score:4, Funny)
Until Microsoft commits to supporting SVG in IE it is hard to see Microsoft's supposed support of the standard as anything but disingenuous.
Well we certainly have a right to be cynical, given past events, but odd things happen. For example Sony has started supporting SD!?
One question though, is there any BSD styled SVG implementation that could be grafted onto a browser?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This Should Be Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely none. They just do not want to since it does not align with their business need of a monopoly. Typically, if they embrace a competing item, it is because it is catching on, and they are losing ground.
Re:This Should Be Interesting (Score:4, Informative)
Look, you can knock IE for not supporting SVG, but the fact that Firefox and WebKit know about SVG and will in some cases display them is not the same as them SUPPORTING SVG.
Firefox and WebKit both suck ass at SVG support, if you don't think so than you really haven't done anything with SVG outside of some examples you found on the web.
No browser supports any SVG 'standard', IE is far from alone.
When I need to use SVGs on a web page, I end up embedding a Java applet using Apache Batik so I at LEAST have support for the useful portions of the standard beyond basic filled text and primitive shapes.
As SVG support in browsers stands now, you render to an image and display it rather than attempting to let the browser handle it, that is, if you want the SVG to actually work as designed.
When someone creates a open (IE: BSD licensed so EVERYONE can actually use it) C SVG library, and the browsers actually pick up on it, THEN I'll start worrying about which browsers support SVG, until then SVG is more of a joke than XAML or VML, both of which have better support on OSes other than Windows than SVG has anywhere (with the exception of Java apps using Batik).
Re: (Score:2)
What does XAML have to do with SVG? Hell if you're going to bitch about XAML, maybe you should complain about WinForms and MFC too. They're equally unrelated.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
MFC is a C++ UI framework, with classes for different UI widgets and Operating System components (such as threads). WinForms is MFC for C#.
XAML is an XML serialisation format for a set of namespaces that define UI widgets (think Mozilla XUL, Qt UI XML or Gtk's Glade), vector graphics (shapes, gradient fills, etc -- think SVG) and other bits and pieces (it even supports styling (think CSS in XML) and data templates (think XSL:T bound to C# data classes instead of XML elements)).
That is, you can do things lik
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Ah, /. is eating the tag. Should be:
<Rectangle Fill="Red"/>
Re:This Should Be Interesting (Score:4, Informative)
XAML is an XML serialisation format for a set of namespaces that define UI widgets
That is incorrect. XAML is a general-purpose XML-based serialization format for CLR object trees (and, in .NET 4, arbitrary object graphs). It doesn't have much to do specifically with UI. For example, the following is a perfectly valid piece of XAML markup, describing a collection with three elements:
It just so happens that WPF (and Silverlight) provide a set of UI-related classes, instances of which are typically combined into trees, and hence are convenient to represent in XAML.
Re: (Score:2)
|| Do you send Microsoft an invoice per post or is Steve Ballmer playing your skin flute right now? ||
Good, gawd, man!
At least, somehow, give a *warning* before you post such stuff!
*mumbles* Now, where is that industrial sized pack of Mental Floss (TM)?
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
<Elaine Benes-ish>"That's what they are! They're real sidlers!!!"</Elaine Benes-ish>
Someone needs to slip little boxes of Tic-Tacs in Microsoft's pockets.
Re:This Should Be Interesting (Score:5, Informative)
You do know that Adobe has stopped supporting their SVG plug-in, right? It was all fine and dandy until they bought Macromedia and didn't need a Flash competitor anymore.
dom
Re:This Should Be Interesting (Score:4, Informative)
XAML is more like XBL (mozilla), not really like SVG. Its used for interface definitions, not graphics. Contrary to popular belief, both flash and SVG can be used for user interfaces, and you're a fucking retard if you do it.
VML is more like SVG. Its made for turning structured data into pretty pictures that use carbon based lifeforms find more useful.
Theres nothing wrong with competing standards initially, there is also nothing wrong with saying 'alright, we didn't when, we'll support your idea instead'. Why do you have a problem with them giving up and doing what you wanted in the first place.
Your last paragraph is about right. I'm not going to praise Microsoft for being special because they made this choice, its just the right thing to do. I'm happy they aren't taking the typical MS approach YET.
Please kill flash. Please. I'm really tired of Adobe. I used to love them, after my first couple of years of using photoshop 2, I probably would have ranked them as one of the greatest software companies in the world. Unfortunately, they've got to the point where their apps are mature and theres nothing else to do, so now they are doing what MS and EA does and basically just changing things every so often to entice or induce you into upgrading, forcefully if possible.
If killing flash means I have to deal with MS for the time being, so be it. I'd rather just have to deal with MS (XAML or VML) and SVG, than deal with MS, SVG, AND Adobe (flash).
The only thing really needed to kill flash is someone to make a C SVG renderer that doesn't suck. Don't bother telling me about the C SVG renderers out there, I know about them and they all suck donkey balls. All browser implementations are utter crap and no browser should claim SVG support. Yes, you can draw a smiley face, but thats pretty much where it ends, nothing non-trivial renders properly in any browser, FORGET about interactivity, filters or animation or other SMIL linking (like sound).
Re:This Should Be Interesting (Score:5, Informative)
It seems you must be confusing XAML with VML [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:2)
And cajones with cojones. Cajones means drawers, of the furniture kind.
Mmm. Cajones... furniture... flying chairs... There must be a pun in there somewhere.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not necessarily, if he means Silverlight (as it uses XAML as the markup 'code')
SVG development? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
True Slashdot developers bang rocks against a bare wire to transmit 1's and 2's to an IBM 7 track magtape (zero hadn't been invented yet). Who needs this fancy-smancy graphical interface crap anyway?
Re: (Score:2)
Who needs this fancy-smancy graphical interface crap anyway?
How do you see the rocks?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
True Slashdot developers bang rocks against a bare wire to transmit 1's and 2's to an IBM 7 track magtape (zero hadn't been invented yet).
I thought for a zero the developers banged one of the rocks against their head, instead of the other rock. After enough low-value long ints, they are promoted to editor.
Text editor (Score:2)
Close. Since SVG is a markup language, I develop mine in a text editor. Or I write Python programs that turn my data into SVG animations automatically.
I have Adobe Illustrator CS3 but there's not much point exporting from it into SVG. I'm better off exporting to PDF for static documents or using Flash for animations since those formats are widely viewable.
Re:SVG development? (Score:4, Informative)
Depends.
Preface: I create non-trivial SVGs that pull in customer data to create a static image for web pages. An example would be something like a tshirt printing website that uses SVGs as templates and allows the user to enter text to be displayed on the shirt and presenting it to the user for verification of the design before printing it. Its far more complex than that as we have custom images, company wide data, all sorts of stuff, the templates can be rather complex and result in SVGs which are several megs in size.
All of these pros and cons are from my perspective and requirements, they wouldn't apply to some guy who just wants to make drawings for him/herself for instance. One of my requirements is that the SVG is 100% compliant with the SVG standard, or with the 1.2 working draft.
Basic SVGs? I prefer Sketsa (Commercial and overpriced), but we use Batik as our backend processor, so the fact that they share the same rendering engine means I get WYSIWYG for the most part. It is however seriously lacking in features that we require.
As an editor, it doesn't support: text flows, setting attributes of the SVG elements that it is unaware of (can be fixed with a plugin, but I've not finished that code yet!), it has some seriously retarded bugs when setting attributes on elements that it does know about. Interactivity and animation, is a wash, I think the recent versions allow some basic things with an experimental plugin but I've haven't tried them. They were trying to make a flash-like editor interface at one point. It does produce SVGs that are standard compliant. I've yet to come across one that didn't validate and render properly in any known good rendering engine (Batik, Adobe SVG plugin, Renesis SVG plugin).
Inkscape, the latest release is actually getting to where its useful for my needs. Recent versions include text flow support which just makes me as happy as can be. It does some utterly retarded things as well. It uses its own custom extensions for filters even when saving in the 'standard' svg format rather than its own, even when the standard filters work the exact same way. Its rendering backend isn't very standards compliant. It won't pass even a small percentage of the tests for the most basic SVG profile test suite. It will now generate SVG fonts, but can't render SVG fonts used in documents. The font generation does not pass the SVG test suite however.
I can now use Inkscape to edit some SVGs without resorting to a text editor, but the fact that it saves with its own extensions even when I tell it to use the standard format means that in a lot of cases, its just used to generate a reference block of code that I use with a text editor.
Adobe Illustrator, for someone who knows nothing about SVGs and doesn't need to do anything really special, Illustrator works great. With the right export settings it will output very compliant SVG files. The code it produces isn't always the prettiest, but it does seem to work and it seems that Batik will pretty much always render it identical to Illustrator, which is a good sign. Good, but not perfect font support, it uses its own names so even if using system fonts, if you don't embed them in the document they fall back to the default when rendered in other renderers because the names don't match. Easy fix by embedded the fonts but this isn't always legally allowed and bloats the hell out of the file size in our case as we have to include all the glyphs in the font in the SVG file as the actual text in the SVG file may change at rendering time (these SVGs are really templates that pull in external data). We use this to allow low end graphics people who can stumble around illustrator to produce SVGs which we can then finalize by hand to be useful for our templates. It doesn't allow you to edit any of the attributes of SVG elements directly. It does allow for Interactivity and does do a good job of using proper SVG filters.
The one I always end up in however is a text editor. I generally use one o
Re:SVG development? (Score:4, Informative)
More recent versions of emacs are able to render SVG files, and I have actually used it on a few occasions to clean up some SVG files (particularly to reduce their file size).
Re: (Score:2)
Fixed (Score:5, Insightful)
We recognize that vector graphics are an important component of the next generation Web platform. As evidenced by our ongoing involvement in W3C working groups, we are committed to participating in the standards process to subvert those standards to our benefit. Our involvement with the SVG working group builds on that commitment.
Fixed that for you.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Fun (Score:2)
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Embrace, Extend, Extinguish (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Embrace, Extend, Extinguish (Score:5, Funny)
I'm amazed it took 8 whole minutes of comments for someone to utter this, and more amazed the article wasn't already tagged as such. I really hope they don't put too much of a dent in things; I'm rather fond of SVG.
(Mafia voice:) "That's a nice graphics standard you got there. Pity if anything happened to it."
Its like bein' taken out fo' a beer by ... (Score:4, Interesting)
"Two Fingerz Ronnie" and he calls you into the back of the place, so he can slip you a shiv between da ribs an' he don' have to walk as far to dispose of da body in the alley 'round back.
I'd trust MS about as much as I'd trust "Two Fingerz."
They like to embrace, extend, fuck you up, go back on standards, steal your technology and leave you bleeding in a back alley. (Remember J-Script? Not JavaScript, J-Script. They couldn't call it JavaScript. But they tried.)
MS has NEVER played straight with ANYBODY.
Re: (Score:2)
Good morning Microsoft! (Score:2)
Nice of you to finally join the rest of the class, did you drink too much last decade?
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:2)
Okay, where is the "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" tag? This article screams for it.
Shenanigans (Score:2)
As a part of Microsoft's continued commitment to interoperability and standards support...
Uh, when did that happen? I have yet to see M$ ever work toward either of those goals.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure they have: They have always strived to make sure everyone is able to use their standards via their products.
Re: (Score:2)
As a part of Microsoft's continued commitment to /subvert, buyout, blackmail, corrupt, destroy and bend to our will/ interoperability and standards support...
66.43% of browsers do not support SVG (Score:2, Insightful)
Resist! its just OOXML all over again (Score:4, Insightful)
Here we go again: http://noooxml.wikidot.com
"Committee stuffing is a standard practice for Microsoft. Microsoft raped ISO with their office file formats, leaving the organization in limbo. The whole campaign against the format have raised an army of people, which are furious about the dirty tactics used by Microsoft to get the broken standard through ISO. This anger won't go away, and I wish good luck to Microsoft to get it adopted by governments. The reputation of Microsoft went down below zero with this process."
Executable code, here we come (Score:5, Insightful)
You just know that Microsoft will try to stick in some way to embed executable code, so SVG files can invoke "platform specific services".
Besides, without that, it won't be useful for viruses and trojans.
Re:Executable code, here we come (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, there already is the ability to add scripts (as in every browser, usually JavaScript) to SVG, just like you would with XHTML, since both are XML-based. So MS could simply expose an API to JS. Oh wait, it already does that! (ActiveX, even partially DirectX.)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Its already there, its called foreign objects, and MS had nothing to do with its introduction. Of course depending on your definition you might want to count the fact that it supports scripting and that the scripting interface is extensible allowing for fully standard compliant SVG files using script parsers that don't exist yet.
If you had a clue, you might realize that pretty much every document format in use has a way to do so on every OS.
The need to embed executable code in order to render other object
There's an old saying about Microsoft.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Embrace <-- you are here
Extend
Extinguish
Re: (Score:2)
it's a trap (Score:2)
it's a trap....didn't Microsoft do the same thing with other working groups (even other working groups of W3C)?
Not including the OpenDocument/XML "issue".
That's nice (Score:5, Insightful)
As soon as Microsoft implements the current SVG standards in IE, they should be welcomed into the process of refining the standards further.
Until they implement the current SVG standards, they should be kept away.
[Opinions mine, not IBM's.]
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting. Without you mentioning it, we wouldn’t even know that you have anything to do with IBM.
Why do people always think others would think that by default they would state anything else than their own opinion? Stating your own opinion is the default. No matter if some asshole might want to pull some shit on you, acting all egocentric, on how this also affects him, because you are in some remote way related.
Protip: He’s the asshole. He’s wrong. You should act insulted that he thinks
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Beats me, but IBM has advised me that I should include a brief disclaimer if I write about things which relate to IBM's areas of business, in places where people might think I was repeating IBM policy.
Since I don't try to keep my identity secret on Slashdot, I figure "better safe than sorry".
When writing (for example) about parakeet training, I don't bother with the disclaimer...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As soon as Microsoft implements the current SVG standards in IE, they should be welcomed into the process of refining the standards further.
There is a difference between "refining" and "extending".
"Refining" is when you say, "oh, you know, I've tried to implement the spec, but paragraph 3 of section 13.4 is contradictory to paragraph 5 of section 7.9, and feature described by section 11.2 is underspecified, because it is not clear how case X should be handled, and nor it is stated that it's implementation-defined" - and then work together with other people working on the standard to ensure that all ambiguities are removed, all underspecified bi
and HTML5? (Score:2)
So where does this leave WebGL? Hopefully untarnished and free to become the de-facto web standard for vector graphics... oh, unless MS now decides that SVG support is sufficient and they don't need to support WebGL at all thus starting another "war" of which browser supports what features.
Be vewy, vewy quiet.... (Score:5, Funny)
We wiwl pwetend to be fwends wif him - then sneak up on the widdow fellah and bwast 'im!!!
Cawfuw - don't let anybody know!!!
Microsoft's first submission to the new SVG std.. (Score:4, Funny)
Section 1.2.5.3.2.8.200.1
Entity SILVERLIGHT_30034509, type STREAM
Contains an open, standard set of Silverlight objects for interpretation.
Entity SILVERLIGHT_FIXERUPPER, type BOOLEAN
To work around bugs in Silverlight.
mmmhmm (Score:4, Insightful)
We recognize that vector graphics are an important component of the next-generation Web platform.
Translation: Since the overwhelming majority of vendors is on board with it, we don't want to be left out in the cold
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
support XHTML as an XML instance rather than as an HTML extension of an SGML instance. Then at last, I won't have to have a fix for <textarea /> , <div />, <script /> problems that arise after normalising XHTML documents.
More likely you'll just end up staring at "xml parsing error, mismatched tag" all day long. Honestly, why people ever started backing a way of working that completely breaks down with even the smallest vagueness in what crosses the wire is beyond me. Good design is liberal