Mailing List Archive

SVG any progress?
Hello,

I would like to use svg in my wiki for musical notes and animated dance
routines. I have seen that there where some tests on Mediawiki (Brion, I think
you experimented with it), but it doesn't look like it went into production
already. What's the current status?

--
Regards,
Marko
Re: SVG any progress? [ In reply to ]
On Oct 20, 2004, at 4:20 PM, argus@dds.nl wrote:
> I would like to use svg in my wiki for musical notes and animated dance
> routines. I have seen that there where some tests on Mediawiki (Brion,
> I think
> you experimented with it), but it doesn't look like it went into
> production
> already. What's the current status?

1.4 in CVS has some limited support for rasterizing uploaded SVG images
to PNG via an external renderer (Batik, Sodipodi, Inkscape, or
ImageMagick). It hasn't been thoroughly tested, but seems ok. It will
probably need some checks on processor usage (eg sensible maximum
sizes) and I'll want to make sure that there's not some major security
problem (like being able to read local files referenced from the SVG).

I've played a bit with options for using the SVG images inline with the
<object> tag, with disappointing results:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2004-October/025778.html
Basically, SVG plugin support isn't very reliable (no transparency in
any browser tested, and printing support is hit-and-miss) and the
fallback to the rasterized version is sometimes either naggy (Mozilla)
or completely broken (Safari).

Obviously rasterized PNGs won't replicate animated things very well.
Additionally, iirc SVG animation is achieved by using JavaScript, which
is another security angle that needs to be checked.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)