"John S. Gage" wrote:
> 
> I strongly (very strongly) suggest that anyone interested in graphics on
> the web go to the following site:
> 
> http://www.mozilla.org/projects/svg/
> 
> There you will have the opportunity to download the latest version of
> Mozilla that contains the SVG engine:
> 
> ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/nightly/latest-trunk/mozilla-win32-svg-mathml.zip
> 
> This is, unfortunately, a Window$ version of the browser, but once you get
> it running on a, presumably, borrowed Window$ machine, you can then go to
> the following site:
> 
>   http://www.croczilla.com/svg/
> 
> where you will see both the graphics and the XML underlying the graphics
> that can do absolutely anything any rational physician would like to do
> with graphics in a record right now.
> 
> If this isn't the future, I will eat my hat (okay, I don't wear a hat ;-).

CSIRO have also released a Java-based SVG toolkit and viewer under an
open source license - see http://sis.cmis.csiro.au/svg/ - as well as a
very nice distributed, Web-based GIS (geographic information system)
which uses the SVG to send the maps to teh thin Java clients (running
ina browser) - also open sourced - see
http://imp.cmis.csiro.au/imroc/csiro/

If you want to check out SVG in your current Windows or Mac browser,
your best bet is probably the no-cost but closed source Adobe SVG
plug-in at http://www.adobe.com/svg/main.html - no Linux support, alas,
so you need to build the latest Mozilla with SVG support from source if
you want SVG on Linux. 

The Python-driven open source Sketch diagramming package for Linux and
Unix can read and write SVG - see http://sketch.sourceforge.net/.

The open source Grace scientific graphics package for Unix and Linux
only, can produce beautiful SVG (and PostScript and PNG) grapics
natively - see http://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/Grace/ - SVG support
seems to be planned for many other packages too.

So, support for SVG is slowly appearing, and yes, I agree it is the
future, even if Microsoft is doing everyting in its power to make
enhanced Windows Metafile format lingua-franca of vector graphics. 

Tim C

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