The W3C SVG Working Group has issued an invitation for public comment on a third Working Draft of Mobile SVG Profiles: SVG Tiny and SVG Basic, Version 1.2, released as part of the W3C Graphics Activity.

The SVG Tiny 1.2 mobile profile is a subset of features in SVG 1.2, defined to be suitable for displaying vector graphics on small devices such as cellphones. Whereas the W3C SVG Mobile 1.1 defined two profiles (SVG Tiny and SVG Basic), the SVG Mobile 1.2 specification only defines one profile: SVG Tiny 1.2.

According to a note from Dean Jackson, W3C SVG Working Group Team Contact, the most important changes are the decision to design just an "SVG Tiny 1.2 profile, new definitions for text wrapping, gradients, scripting, non-scaling strokes, and the ability to place graphics in client space without being affected by zoom and pan (e.g., legends on maps)."

SVG Tiny 1.2 Document Fragments must conform to the SVG Tiny 1.2 Relax NG schema, now supplied as Appendix D in the Working Draft.

A new normative Appendix E supplies the SVG Tiny Conformance Criteria, covering Fragment Conformance, User Agent Conformance, Dynamic SVGT User Agent Conformance, and SVGT User Agent Compatibility Issues.

From the Working Draft's twenty main sections, nine (9) sections contain updated information relevant to SVG Mobile 1.2, including: Document Structure; Coordinate Systems, Transformations and Units; Text; Painting: Filling, Stroking and Marker Symbols; Gradients and Patterns; Interactivity; Linking; Scripting; and Animation.

SVGT content "can be in the form of stand-alone SVG Documents or document fragments embedded within a parent XML document. SVGT 1.2 supports Multiple Pages, Streaming, Progressive Rendering, the 'audio' Element and the 'Video' element."

SVGT "allows interactivity with declarative animation and with the integration of XMLEvents, as described in SVG 1.2. Linking into specific views of the SVG document is supported by a subset of the svgView fragment identifier as defined in SVG 1.1. SVGT supports scripting through the integration of XML Events, as defined in SVG 1.2. SVGT allows the language features to support animation through scripting; it will support the UDOM as defined in the SVG 1.2 draft."

Bibliographic Information

Mobile SVG Profiles: SVG Tiny and SVG Basic, Version 1.2. W3C Working Draft. June 29, 2004. Edited by Ola Andersson (ZOOMON), Tolga Capin (Nokia), and Vincent Hardy (Sun Microsystems, Inc). Version URL: http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-SVGMobile12-20040629/. Previous version URL: http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-SVGMobile12-20040325/. Latest SVG Mobile 1.2 version URL: http://www.w3.org/TR/SVGMobile12/. Latest SVG Mobile Recommendation URL: http://www.w3.org/TR/SVGMobile/.

Overview: Mobile SVG Profiles

"It has been established by industry demand, overwhelming support in the SVG working group and requests from the SVG developer community that some form of SVG suited to displaying vector graphics on small devices is required. Moreover, the mission statement of SVG 1.0 specifically addresses small devices as a target area for vector graphics display. In order to meet these demands the SVG Working Group has committed to a concerted effort to create a profile specification that addresses mobile devices. The SVG Mobile 1.1 specification addressed that requirement and defined two profiles to deal with the variety of mobile devices having different characteristics in terms of CPU speed, memory size, and color support. The SVG Mobile 1.1 specification defiles SVG Tiny (SVGT) 1.1, which is suitable for highly restricted mobile devices; it also defines a second profile, SVG Basic (SVGB) 1.1, which is targeted for higher level mobile devices.

The SVG 1.2 specification adds features requested by SVG authors, implementors and users. The SVG Mobile 1.2 specification addresses requirement made on the mobile profiles. Because there have only be requests to add features to the SVG Tiny profile, this specification defines a new profile for SVG Tiny, SVG Tiny 1.2..." [from the Introduction]

About W3C Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Format

"SVG is a platform for two-dimensional graphics. It has two parts: an XML-based file format and a programming API for graphical applications. Key features include shapes, text and embedded raster graphics, with many different painting styles. It supports scripting through languages such as ECMAScript and has comprehensive support for animation.

SVG is used in many business areas including Web graphics, animation, user interfaces, graphics interchange, print and hardcopy output, mobile applications and high-quality design.

SVG is a royalty-free vendor-neutral open standard developed under the W3C Process. It has strong industry support; Authors of the SVG specification include Adobe, Agfa, Apple, Canon, Corel, Ericsson, HP, IBM, Kodak, Macromedia, Microsoft, Nokia, Sharp and Sun Microsystems. SVG viewers are deployed to over 100 million desktops, and there is a broad range of support in many authoring tools.

SVG builds upon many other successful standards such as XML (SVG graphics are text-based and thus easy to create), JPEG and PNG for image formats, DOM for scripting and interactivity, SMIL for animation and CSS for styling.

SVG is interoperable. The W3C release a test suite and implementation results to ensure conformance.

SVG is a language for describing two-dimensional graphics in XML. SVG allows for three types of graphic objects: vector graphic shapes (e.g., paths consisting of straight lines and curves), images and text. Graphical objects can be grouped, styled, transformed and composited into previously rendered objects. Text can be in any XML namespace suitable to the application, which enhances searchability and accessibility of the SVG graphics. The feature set includes nested transformations, clipping paths, alpha masks, filter effects, template objects and extensibility. SVG drawings can be dynamic and interactive. The Document Object Model (DOM) for SVG, which includes the full XML DOM, allows for straightforward and efficient vector graphics animation via scripting. A rich set of event handlers such as onmouseover and onclick can be assigned to any SVG graphical object. Because of its compatibility and leveraging of other Web standards, features like scripting can be done on SVG elements and other XML elements from different namespaces simultaneously within the same Web page..." [from the W3C About SVG document]