Good, Bad and Ugly things about SVG

After working with SVG for a few weeks, here are my initial impressions:

• Includes a very friendly XML schema which is easy to implement (GOOD)
• Nice mix of high & low level rendering capabilities (GOOD)
• I couldn't find a way to control the rendering DPI.. it seems locked into 72 (UGLY)
• Spec includes both regular XML version and a compressed format for smaller footprint files (GOOD)
• Has several different viewers with reasonable compability including Adobe and Corel (GOOD)
• Has NO built in printing capabilites - The SVG spec doesn't include printing, or print control elements such as numbering, page breaks, etc. (BAD!)
• Most viewers don't support printing in any way or form , Adobe supports limited rastered printing. (BAD)
• Rendering performance is problematic. The SharpVectorGraphics library can take up to 5 seconds to render a page... Even the Adobe viewer is much slower than the PDF viewer for any given document. (BAD)

In MHO, SVG shows a lot of promise but is still not 100% ready for prime-time. The upcoming versions of the specs should handle many of the issues I mentioned and many vendors are joining the SVG bandwagon, so it is probably a pretty good bet going forward. However if you plan implement or consume SVG *today* then you can expect the usual grief and aggravation associated with cutting edge technologies...

Just my 2 cents :)

Comments

• Anonymous
  May 12, 2003
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  May 12, 2003
  Don, correct me if I am wrong here, but wouldn't the GDI+ renderer from SharpVectors allow you to print your SVG straight to a printer device?