Latest News (page 5)

The Apache Batik team is proud to announce the long-awaited release of Apache Batik version 1.7beta1, a Java-based toolkit for processing SVG. This is the first release of Batik in approximately two years, and brings many new features and improvements over version 1.6.

AMD has announced two new mobile graphics chips, the G12 and G40, which they claim can accelerate vector graphics (including SVG) up to 30 times. They demonstrated smooth animation and zooming, and clean anti-aliasing. The chips are slated for release in devices around Christmas 2008.

Photo of AMD breadboard

The Java heads amongst you may wish to check out this article on using SVG and JSP together: Using Sun Java Studio Creator with SVG.

Kiyut just released Sketsa SVG Graphics Editor 4.2, a cross platform vector drawing application based on SVG. It features various tools for optimizing content creation, giving designers unsurpassed support for creativity. These tools include property palette, source editor, resources editor, SVG specific shape tools, transformation tools, and additional illustration tools. Sketsa uses SVG as a native file format.

Four Japanese companies have founded the SVGMap Consortium in order to develop browsing software, and server and service infrastructure for the dissemination of Web maps in the SVG Tiny format (with geo extensions). An SVG mobile browser is being developed which supports high performance rendering of large map data, hyper layering functionality, scrolling, zooming, and handling of geo-metadata. The additional functionality is built on top of SVG Tiny 1.2. SVG is a government mandated standard for mobile geodata in Japan (g-contents initiative). The consortium is supported by other companies and research institutions.

More information can be found at http://blog.svg-map.com/2007/03/about_establish.html

MobileMonday Sydney's March event's theme will be "rich media content" and will be featuring Mobile SVG as a key enabler technology in that field. Antoine Quint will present an overview of the Mobile SVG ecosystem while Nandini Ramani from Sun and Andrew Emmons from BitFlash will provide live demonstrations of services and demo applications made possible by Mobile SVG. The event is held at the Shelbourne Hotel, 200 Sussex Street at 6:30pm and is free for all to attend.

Version 2.0 of the SVG-friendly comics app includes:

• Usability-focused Stem Curvature Parameterization
• Rounder, Rufflier Ruffles
• Explicit Line Break Control
• Variable Zoom
• More Default Preferences
• Unobtrusive Rulers
• More Control over Panel Layout
• Start New Artwork from an Existing Image
• "Selected" ruffle harmonics are now hilighted in the Artwork Pane
• Variable Rectangularness for Thought Balloons and Starbursts

The Open Font Library is proud to announce the commencement of the Open Font Library Logo competition: Artists and designers of all ranges are invited to make a logo to help identify the project. Judging will take place by contributors to the project, Alex Roberts (bovinity), Liftarn, and Zeimusu, who will select the winning logo. The last chance to submit submissions is March 14, 2007 at 11:59 PM PST. After that, the judges will select a logo within five days from the submission closing date.

The MapViewSVG team is proud to announce the release of version 6.0 of MapViewSVG.
MapViewSVG 6 now offers new capabilities such as batch processing, tiling of line layers, statistical functionalities, much better and faster raster layer support etc.

I created a day Planner in SVG using Inkscape. I'm no graphic designer so I just copied this excellent planner by Kaushal. I like this layout a lot ! :-)

You can download the SVG from here.

The good thing is, if you open the SVG in a browser like Firefox, the embedded javascript will update some sections of the image. For example, date will be changed to current date, a new sudoke puzzle will be embedded everyday (taken from http://www.dailysudoku.com) etc. For customizing the layout, you can again use Inkscape or SodiPodi. Something like creating widgets for your day planner !! :-)

And oh yes ! Javascript support means that all AJAX goodness is available to you ! :-)

Do you have any interesting ideas for cool widgets for a day planner?

Artists and Developers ally to boost Open Source Graphics Software: Libre Graphics Meeting 2007 Montréal announced. Building on the overwhelming success of last year's Libre Graphics Meeting in Lyon, France, key Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) graphics projects are pleased to announce the second Libre Graphics Meeting (LGM), to be held in Montréal, Quebec, Canada, May 6, 2007 at École Polytechnique de Montréal.

With this newest version, Inkscape (a vector drawing tool) now features the Gaussian Blur filter that allows you to softly and naturally blur any object. This enables a wide range of photorealistic effects: arbitrarily shaped shades and lights, depth of field, drop shadows, glows, etc. Also, blurred objects can be used as masks for other objects to achieve the "feathered mask" effect.

A new history dialog allows you to browse your change history, and many new extension effects are added including Pattern along Path and Color Effects. And of course bug fixes, speed ups and other little improvements

Kiyut just released Sketsa SVG Graphics Editor 4.1.0, a cross platform vector drawing application based on SVG. It features various tools for optimizing content creation, giving designers unsurpassed support for creativity. These tools include property palette, source editor, resources editor, SVG specific shape tools, transformation tools, and additional illustration tools. Sketsa uses SVG as a native file format.

This demo shows that it is possible to edit your XML in a user-friendly manner, while updating an SVG chart at the same time. Check an the alpha demo of Xopus in Firefox. It really is alpha quality with a lot of known bugs, so please don't report any bug unless it won't run at all. In the demo you can see a pie chart which is drawn using SVG. Every change in the XML updates the pie chart in real time. Besides SVG output, MathML is also supported.