SVG is probably a dead duck. I have not wanted to invest any more work in it for more than a year. This is not to say that I dislike SVG much at all, but the Adobe plugin has a lot of problems, and SVG is nowhere near as universally available as Silverlight already is. I gave up when the new Mozilla stuff was barely functional, and Opera was even worse. Since IE no longer handles SVG, you can continue banging your head on the wall, or just make the pragmatic decision and go with Silverlight.
Silverlight has hit the ground running hard. It isn't going to do the members of this group any good to put their heads in the ground and hope that it will go away and that SVG will somehow rise from its longtime sickbed. There have been lots of good things to go by the wayside, such as Ventura Publisher (which is still the best page layout program nobody has heard about) but is probably very dead since there isn't any money to be made in developing it any further. Microsoft has spent their millions developing Silverlight, and it shows. It is relevant to the more honest and/or pragmatic members of this group, who are going to have to decide how to migrate their code to something that is going to be more widely available than SVG. I could hardly care less about whether it is open-sourced or not. I just don't see how volunteer efforts can find a revenue stream to keep up with proprietary code. I just want a platform for my ideas, and I will pay for good tools. Just the rendering speed of Silverlight is something really exciting. Ordinary mortals can code really fast complex graphics without having to deal with low level graphic details. If SVG could do this (and had a well-financed patron behind it) nobody would even care about Silverlight. People here don't generally post about Flash, because we've been there and found it seriously wanting in flexibility and programming ease. I am not a lurking Microsoft person, though I have worked there as a somewhat resentful permatemp a couple of times. I am perfectly aware that Microsoft doesn't always play so nice. But Silverlight really is kewl. I am honestly very excited about it and I will leave it at that. _____ From: svg-developers@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Doug Schepers Sent: Friday, May 25, 2007 6:15 PM To: svg-developers@yahoogroups.com Subject: [svg-developers] OT (was: Have you played with Silverlight?) Hi, Kevin and Geoff, et al- As owner of the SVG-Developers list, and as a strong supporter for open standards, I'm going to ask you politely to stop evangelizing Silverlight on SVG-Dev (as I've asked for self-moderation in the past regarding Flash). I have nothing against Silverlight, and it's fine if you want to use it, but it's not on-topic for our list; this is a forum for technical questions on using SVG. Silverlight has the weight and financial backing of Microsoft behind it; Flash and Apollo both have Adobe's backing. All these proprietary technologies have their own mailing lists, so I don't think they need any further advertising on this list. SVG is growing steadily, and it has market relevance, but open standards are already at a huge disadvantage compared to proprietary technologies (and not for technical reasons). I feel that it is important that the Web remain open, and part of that is ensuring that no one company controls the languages of the Web. I'm not trying to censor this list, and I'm not going to block any posts. I think that a fair and open discussion of SVG will include some comparison to competing technologies. It's important that SVG grow in response to other technologies (as Silverlight derives heavily from SVG). But it irritates me when people on this list recommend abandoning SVG, in favor of proprietary competitors. It's FUD, and it's not polite. A more constructive activity would be to identify what features of those corporate technologies you find compelling, and ask for comparable features to be added to SVG on [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:www-svg%40w3.org> (the W3C's public SVG list, which the SVG WG monitors for feedback). Also, you can appeal directly to browser vendors (or even contribute code, e.g. to Mozilla and Batik), and let them know you need particular SVG features (I think that the Mozilla Corp could use some encouragement to add resources to SVG, for example). It's always an individual choice whether to do the Right Thing (tm), or to let corporate interests take control (and frankly, sometimes you have no choice, out of pragmatism); but the sum of those individual choices determines the landscape of the Web, and the degree to which it relies on open standards. Sorry if that sounds all preachy, but it's how I feel, and why I think SVG is more important than any similar corporate equivalent. If the technical difference were more pronounced, I might feel differently. But for most purposes, SVG is as good as its more tightly-controlled cousins. I think the big difference is in authoring tool support, and there is something that can be done about that. I'm sure you can understand my perspective, and I hope you will honor this request. </rant> Regards- -Doug [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ----- To unsubscribe send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -or- visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/svg-developers and click "edit my membership" ---- Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/svg-developers/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/svg-developers/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
