We are going to have one (and maybe a bit more later) class on something that could easily require an entire semester. The subject of Scalable Vector Graphics involves drawing, obviously, but this drawing includes text, and the possibility of its presentation in a variety of forms, and color and texture and transparency and much else. The most interesting thing that can be taken advantage of in so many ways is animation: not animation intended to dazzle, although that can be done, but animation intended to aid in explanation.

For example you can arrange so that when a user clicks or makes some form of mouse motion over a region of a page a textual explanation or an animated graphic shows up, and yet you do not lose your original place in the page.

The following set of references will show you a few of the many possibilities available with SVG. Remember, one of the most important things about it is that SVG is just a particular XML application, so is totally compatible with all the other things that you can do with XML.

W3C overview of SVG,

contains links to documents, implementations, articles, and discussion of the standard and where it is going.

PenDraw - 2D Programming Language,

which claims it "is to SVG what Perl is to data".

simple examples,

some that I have developed for personal use.

The Adobe home page for SVG,

containing in particular links for downloading the SVG plugin for your browser.

Adobe SVG zone demos

showing some of the things that can be done with SVG.

SVG Resources,

by Ken Sall from the Web Developer Virtual Library, is a valuable collection of references.

Render dynamic graphs,

Create SVG graphs that scale dynamically with their content, by Brian Venn, from IBM developerWorks.

Digging Animation,

by Antoine Quint, from the O'Reilly xml.com site.

SVG Animation and Interaction,

by David Duce, is a series of slides that illustrate and explain the topic. In particular the actual code is shown for many of the slides.

slide 12 from the previous set of slides.

javascript code for slide 12

Bringing SVG Power to Java^TM Applications,

by Christophe Jolif, from the Sun Java Developer site.

Doing it with SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), Part 1,

a gentle tutorial on SVG by Ken Sall, from the Web Developer's Virtual Library.

Publications and Presentations by Ken Sall,

contains descriptions and links to a number of pages prepared for NASA, focussed on the use of XML and Java for Astronomical Instrument Control.