I couldn't help but notice that no one with a geospatial
background is involved in authoring the emerging
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) specification from
W3C. On the surface, it would seem that GRASS
represents one of the premier opportunities for implementing
SVG for both reading in and writing out vector data.
But short of considerations for geospatial data (i.e.,
projection system integration), it would appear the
geospatial community is missing a golden opportunity. Any thoughts on this from the GRASS community?
http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/CR-SVG11-20020430/
Jack Varga
Boulder, CO
We still need to check if SVG is completely unencumbered by patents.
(This is a general problem for the Free Software community,
not just special to GRASS so this might not be the best place to
discuss it in detail.)
On Mon, Nov 18, 2002 at 02:30:53PM -0700, Jack Varga wrote:
I couldn't help but notice that no one with a geospatial
background is involved in authoring the emerging
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) specification from
W3C. On the surface, it would seem that GRASS
represents one of the premier opportunities for implementing
SVG for both reading in and writing out vector data.
But short of considerations for geospatial data (i.e.,
projection system integration), it would appear the
geospatial community is missing a golden opportunity.
Any thoughts on this from the GRASS community?
http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/CR-SVG11-20020430/
Bernhard Reiter writes:
> We still need to check if SVG is completely unencumbered by patents.
In theory at least, the W3C will not standardize on specifications which
incorporate unlicensed patents. At very least, a standard which
includes algorithms patented by W3C members will come with a patent
grant.
--
-russ nelson http://russnelson.com |
Crynwr sells support for free software | PGPok | it's better to be free
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315 268 1925 voice | than to be correct.
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | +1 315 268 9201 FAX |
Not clearly understanding patent law, etc., it would seem that if W3C
is leading the specification generation, they would be driven to avoid
complications of patent infringement as they typically do, and the GRASS
development team could proceed on that presumption. Even if a complication
arose post completion, an open spec can be ammended to skirt the legal
implication, and no one would be quicker to do so than W3C, at least
while Tim Berners Lee has something to say about it. For me personally,
that would be enough to proceed upon. My initial overview of the spec
suggests that nothing in the spec itself is patentable.
Regardless, I stand by my original question. This emerging spec could
be very powerful and beneficial to the geospatial community. It would
seem that all but the largest of commercial vendors has something to
gain by implementing interfaces to this vector exchange format. None
more so than an open source GIS, institutional organizations and
governments paying absorbatant fees for overly restrictive licenses. Particularly an open source GIS moving toward a more complex
vector data model.
Just my $0.02...
-jv
Bernhard Reiter wrote:
We still need to check if SVG is completely unencumbered by patents.
(This is a general problem for the Free Software community, not just special to GRASS so this might not be the best place to
discuss it in detail.)
On Mon, Nov 18, 2002 at 02:30:53PM -0700, Jack Varga wrote:
I couldn't help but notice that no one with a geospatial
background is involved in authoring the emerging
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) specification from
W3C. On the surface, it would seem that GRASS
represents one of the premier opportunities for implementing
SVG for both reading in and writing out vector data.
But short of considerations for geospatial data (i.e.,
projection system integration), it would appear the
geospatial community is missing a golden opportunity. Any thoughts on this from the GRASS community?
http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/CR-SVG11-20020430
/
Jack Varga wrote:
Regardless, I stand by my original question. This emerging spec could
be very powerful and beneficial to the geospatial community. It would
seem that all but the largest of commercial vendors has something to
gain by implementing interfaces to this vector exchange format. None
more so than an open source GIS, institutional organizations and
governments paying absorbatant fees for overly restrictive licenses.
Particularly an open source GIS moving toward a more complex
vector data model.
SVG isn't a "vector exchange format"; it's a vector-based graphics
format. Its closest competitors are Macromedia Flash, PostScript and
PDF.
SVG may well be a suitable output format, in the sense that we might
wish to produce a v.out.svg utility, or an SVG driver (analogous to
the PNG driver), or something similar to ps.map but using SVG instead
of PostScript.
It isn't appropriate as a storage format. It might be worthwhile
attempting to produce a tool which will extract geographic vector data
from an SVG file. However, such a task would inevitably be just as
complex and unreliable as extracting such data from e.g. PostScript or
PDF files.
--
Glynn Clements <glynn.clements@virgin.net>
Jack Varga wrote:
I couldn't help but notice that no one with a geospatial
background is involved in authoring the emerging
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) specification from
W3C. On the surface, it would seem that GRASS
represents one of the premier opportunities for implementing
SVG for both reading in and writing out vector data.
But short of considerations for geospatial data (i.e.,
projection system integration), it would appear the
geospatial community is missing a golden opportunity. Any thoughts on this from the GRASS community?
http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/CR-SVG11-20020430/
Jack Varga
Boulder, CO
Not GRASS related, but there are many GIS projects that use SVG. For example,
http://www.opengis.org/techno/specs/02-009/GML2-11.html
http://freegis.org/search.en.html?search=svg
--
BABA Yoshihiko
On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 12:35:06PM -0500, Russell Nelson wrote:
Bernhard Reiter writes:
> We still need to check if SVG is completely unencumbered by patents.
In theory at least, the W3C will not standardize on specifications which
incorporate unlicensed patents. At very least, a standard which
includes algorithms patented by W3C members will come with a patent
grant.
That is the recent theory.
Still the situation is not clear enough for me.
I will continue the quest for a clear analysis of the situation
on discussion@fsfeurope.org.
The FSF Europe is interested to analyse the situation
from a Free Software point of view.
http://mailman.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/discussion/2002-November/003356.html
Bernhard
The OGIS reference is a "recommendation for a specification," not a
specification in and of itself, (still evolving), but it should be noted that
GML is entirely independent of SVG. Their only real similarity is that
they are both built upon XML. No telling how long it will take to
become an actual spec considering all the commercial interests involved.
Browsing through the SVG mail list archive, for example, the only
comment posted from an ESRI mail address had to do with how to
"protect the content transmitted via SVG," opposed to something
constructive to the format.
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-svg/2002Jan/0038.html
The SVG Toolkit and OpenSVGMapServer listed on the freegis.org
site look very interesting. The shp2svg script is interesting in that you
could use arcview to generate svg output (i.e., browser based map
server), but I'm not sure why you would want to do that. The
performance would be lousy, and if you didn't need dynamic map
generation, why not just use bitmaps?
BABA Yoshihiko wrote:
Jack Varga wrote:
I couldn't help but notice that no one with a geospatial
background is involved in authoring the emerging
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) specification from
W3C. On the surface, it would seem that GRASS
represents one of the premier opportunities for implementing
SVG for both reading in and writing out vector data.
But short of considerations for geospatial data (i.e.,
projection system integration), it would appear the
geospatial community is missing a golden opportunity. Any thoughts on this from the GRASS community?
http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/CR-SVG11-20020430/
Jack Varga
Boulder, CO
Not GRASS related, but there are many GIS projects that use SVG. For example,
http://www.opengis.org/techno/specs/02-009/GML2-11.html
http://freegis.org/search.en.html?search=svg
There's nothing that says that it can't be an exchange format, but I wasn't
thinking along the lines of sdts or shape. Instead a data to screen and screen
to data exchange format, although granted I haven't read through the spec
thoroughly enough to determine if it would support the latter.
The pixel to real-world coordinates is one of the major missing pieces
(IMO) of browser based mapping. Granted, the support has to be in the
browser, but I believe that's coming and the SVG spec could help
speed that along.
Just my $0.02
-jv
Glynn Clements wrote:
SVG isn't a "vector exchange format"; it's a vector-based graphics
format. Its closest competitors are Macromedia Flash, PostScript and
PDF.
SVG may well be a suitable output format, in the sense that we might
wish to produce a v.out.svg utility, or an SVG driver (analogous to
the PNG driver), or something similar to ps.map but using SVG instead
of PostScript.
It isn't appropriate as a storage format. It might be worthwhile
attempting to produce a tool which will extract geographic vector data
from an SVG file. However, such a task would inevitably be just as
complex and unreliable as extracting such data from e.g. PostScript or
PDF files.