Scalable Vector Graphics

Scalable Vector Graphics, or SVG, defines 2-dimensional schematic drawings made up of vector graphic shapes, images and text. Zooming in on an SVG drawing allows greater and greater detail to be seen if the drawing is complex.

The first version of SVG (1.0) appeared in 2001.

This was superceded by SVG 1.1, the 2nd Edition of SVG 1.1 was defined in August 2011 and is the current version.

Work is in progress on SVG 2.0 which is due to appear as a Recommendation in October 2016.

A major feature of SVG, unlike Flash, is that coordinates are real numbers and infinite zooms are possible while still retaining the quality of the image unlike the JPG image shown below.

JPG bitmap: 18326 bytes, fixed resolution, binary Pixel based images (gif, png, jpeg, ...) 2 × 4 × 8 × 16 × JPEG SVG Click SVG SVG SVG Click