For the last few weeks, a debate is going on among the people of this group, about the future of SVG. Some of the people sound pessimistic, and some optimistic, but the vast majority of them have a common goal, of saving the idea of the open source policy, based on the recommendations of the W3C. It seems that after a decade of the W3C existence, its cooperation with the proprietary software industry does not follow the initial expectations. The general feeling is, that different vendors are learning how to use partially the W3C recommendation (e.g. XML), without implement the rest. The policy of keeping their plans in secret is understandable, but on the other hand it is causing a very strong concern among the people of this group.
Everyone knows, that there is only one way for stabilizing the situation: To have a free reliable browser, with native support for SVG. They are such attempts: Amaya, Opera and Mozilla. The latter delivered a good product, but its implementation of SVG is still partial, and far behind the ASV plugin. Not only SVG is at stake. If SVG goes away, so will go the achievements and the future of the W3C. The reason that SVG could be a stumbling block is, that the vector graphics has an enormous potential for applications, and therefore for tremendous gains of the companies. The question is how to achieve such free and reliable browser with native support of SVG. I had some thoughts about that, and I want to share them with you, the members of this group. I'll be very grateful for your honest opinion. No matter, if what I propose is pure nonsense, is a naive approach to the problem, or if it looks feasible. The appearance of the Web followed the necessity for the transfer of big amounts of experimental data between academic institutes, all over the word, in order to cooperate in research. Soon it was commercialized, and the W3C was founded with the purpose to define some rules for the competitors. It is time now that the W3C receives help from the academy. Why the academy? The academy is doing research and development. There are collaborations between different institutions, all over the world. People there are skilled and innovative. Any work done, is reported openly, and there are no secrets. Of course there is competition, but this competition is open and constructive. Who from the academy? There are departments of computer sciences and/or of computer engineering. Each department has graduate students (PhD, MSc, Diploma or whatever). The graduate student's labor is cheep. Most of their income is supplied by the institutions, and they'll need probably some supplement. The labor of the faculty members, that supervise the students, is for free, since they are paid by the institutions. How this should work? The task of producing the browser should be centralized by an organization, which will divide it in few projects. The projects will be proposed to the academic community. The same project should be given to more than one academic institution. After a project is completed, the organization should evaluate it, and decide which institution provided the most suitable solution. This should not interfere with the academic freedom, of judging the academic validity of the project. What organization? The staff of W3C consists of highly skilled and dedicated people. They did, and continue to do, a very important task of issuing the recommendations. However, time came to reconsider the priorities. Is it more important to have recommendations for SVG version 1.2 without a browser (and practically without SVG), or a browser with native support of SVG version 1.1? Without any doubt, the second choice is better! I don't imply, that version 1.2 should be abandoned, but just postponed for some time. That way the W3C staff will be able to channel its efforts on the browser. What choice of browser? The W3C should decide what browser should be written. What computer language to use (e.g. Java, C). If Java is used, there is an advantage of portability and the browser could be almost the same for any of the operating systems (Windows, Linux, Mac). On the other hand, the organization (W3C) may decide differently. The W3C should decide also, if to start from scratch, or from an existing browser (e.g. Amaya) and to continue its development. Who will pay the bill? As mentioned earlier, the grants necessary for carrying a project by the academy should not be big. The software companies should not object to this development of a browser. On the contrary, they can benefit from a browser, that they do not have to develop. They did not object to Amaya. Did they? They should contribute for this browser. In addition, the countries, participating in W3C, could be asked for a contribution. What could be the cost? I am going to present here a calculation of the possible cost, on the back of an envelope, just to have an order of magnitude. Let's assume that the whole task will start from the existing Amaya, which is written in Java. One could divide the task in five different projects, and assume that each one of these projects will be given to five different institutions. One needs therefore 25 grants. The projects could be completed in two years. A sum of 20,000 $ (USD) is reasonable for one year, and therefore the total cost is 40,000 X 25 = 1 M$ (One million USD), really not so expensive for such a big task. Cheers, Samy ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Get Bzzzy! (real tools to help you find a job). Welcome to the Sweet Life. http://us.click.yahoo.com/KIlPFB/vlQLAA/TtwFAA/1U_rlB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> ----- To unsubscribe send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -or- visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/svg-developers and click "edit my membership" ---- Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/svg-developers/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
