Thanks for the level-headed email Martin.
What do you think about the two articles (Tav's and Amelia's)? http://codepen.io/AmeliaBR/post/me-and-svg http://tavmjong.free.fr/svg2_status.html
Is there something to the notion that SVG2+ may never happen, or be so tenuous that it takes years?
I guess I am stuck on this conspiracy theory, which is probably wrong (my bias):
1. SVG is the standard. 2. Artists seek various features in Inkscape. 3. Dev say, "It's not in the standard. Influence that." 4. The standard says, "Not now. Not yet." 5. Adobe and MS and Apple have a coffee break and say, "Hell, suckers. Never is when they can have it!" Muhaha. 6. Artists and devs wait. 7. Cobwebs grow as the standard decays further by sheer reluctance of important members to participate, or by voodoo market forces.
I don't have evidence, but the shape of graphic tools in Linux-land (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?
/d
On 23 April 2017 at 04:07, Martin Owens <doctormo@...155...> wrote:
On Sat, 2017-04-22 at 23:21 +0100, C R wrote:
Uh, no. :) SVG1 is a delivery format for simple vector graphics. SVG2 will eventually become a delivery format as well because it's no longer developed. That's exactly what this thread is about: some users have it in their minds that everything must be somehow crammed into an SVG, and viewable in browser. Well, it's not going to happen. Inkscape will always be able to save/export to SVG1 and SVG2 as a delivery format, and read those formats back in for use in other projects. However, those formats simply don't cover the complete needs of a pro-graphics construction file. We even have mesh gradients now, which is not officially in either spec. Guess we should abandon that too, just because some people like Inkscape the way it is? No... no I think not. :)
SVG is a comprehensive document format, a standard.
If we extend the format, then it will only be with the intention of extending svg as a format. The reason why there is no InkscapeVectorFormat file, is because we're not going to create the impression that improvements and additions we make are just for us.
The ideal situation to be in, is one where we make an addition and then browsers, command line tools, other art tools, make the decision that what we offer has some merit and they implement it too.
Then when it comes time to set the standard, these well worn extensions are incorporated into the standard.
This is what happened with HTML5, and I suspect SVG2 is very much our XHTML2, with very good intentions, but very little to show for it. Many of the items that would be great for our users were vetoed as we went along. What we have had is vendors who couldn't decide what svg should be and where they could subset their support appropriately.
So are we going to give up on SVG? No. Are we going to stop standardisation and stop trying to convince other teams that svg+ is a good way forwards? I really hope not.
I'll give you a very small micro example. The animation tool AniGen.org uses Inkscape's layer attribute to designate layers. It's not something that svg has, but it's something that tools choose to support because Inkscape is important and moves things forward well.
Also AniGen is why inkscape shouldn't do animation ;-) but we'll save that one for the other heated debate.
Best Regards, Martin Owens
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