SVG : Java Glossary

SVG logaSVG
SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) ’s file format for exchanging images stored as vectors an opposed to pixels. Eventually it might become for images what HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is for text, a way of compactly sending images around the Internet to be displayed in browsers. It is officially recommended by W3C. It uses XML (extensible Markup Language) to mathematically describe an image. For example, the following .svg file renders as a ladybug.
ladybug
You can see how it handles gradients. The XML file specifies the colours at various intermediate points and the rendering engine interpolates.

Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw(read only), Inkscape, Sodipodi, Sketch and Kontour support svg files. The Gimp, Paint Shop Pro, and IconLover do not. Opera browser will render them on the command line or in <img tags, allowing you to scale them up as big as you want, then capture them as png files with FastStone.

SVG files are human readable. The guts are path outlines that look like this:

d="M 710.02068,860.16801 C 709.57268,859.46101 708.50468,857.49601 707.64668,855.80101 C 636.85368,836.56301 635.92468,832.74901 630.99668,791.75201 L 608.71968,526.52201 L 770.43268,801.21901 C 766.05068,801.80101 765.19968,802.31501 763.84468,805.20501 C 761.61568,809.96101 760.39168,815.07001 758.07768,829.28901 C 755.75768,843.54901 754.77268,845.88501 748.56768,851.86701 …L 710.02068,860.16801 z"

M x,y means moveto
L x,p means lineto
C x,y,x1,y1,x2,y2 means absolute curveto


CMP homejump to top

available on the web at:

http://mindprod.com/jgloss/svg.html
  

optional Replicator mirror
of mindprod.com
on local hard disk J:

J:\mindprod\jgloss\svg.html
logo
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