> Is there something to the notion that SVG2+ may never happen, or be
> so tenuous that it takes years?
This is really something that Tav can delve into far more than I can.
> (my O/S pov) is primitive. I have to ask why we can't do the few
> essential things (like abstract-out symbols/clones and palettes - the
> basic efficiency stuff) after so many years?
That's an investment problem, not a standards problem. Most of the
issues we have (the big ones anyway) are not sitting here waiting for
svg, they're waiting for developers with time/money to work on them.
Take CMYK, svg has supported cmyk for a long time (in that you can
specify colours as cmyk data) but Inkscape's capacity to load, save and
then export those colours to pdf has been slow to realise.
I hope this adds something, but I'm not an expert really.