WebCGM and SVG Revisited
Lofton Henderson is an independent contractor with long experience in computer graphics, and especially in Web graphics technologies - WebCGM and SVG. He co-authored the "The CGM Handbook", Henderson and Mumford, Academic Press, 1993, 450 pp. He has long experience on the ANSI and ISO graphics standards committees, and has had a role with several industry consortia defining CGM profiles: ATA, PIP, J2008, and RIF. Currently, he is co-chair of W3C's QA Working Group, Program Director and past chair of the CGM Open Consortium, a member of W3C's SVG Working Group, and a member of two OASIS technical committees, Conformance, and XSLT conformance.
Dieter Weidenbrueck is the founder and President of ITEDO Software, the manufacturer of the Technical Illustration package IsoDraw and of IsoView, the viewer for intelligent graphics. He is the primary architect of the IsoDraw and IsoView software programs. Dieter Weidenbrueck has developed a considerable experience in the field of documentation standards and is actively participating in standardization efforts concerning technical illustration. He is one of the authors of the WebCGM Recommendation. He serves as the current Chairman of the CGM Open Consortium.
In 2003, the authors set out to provide an objective answer to the persistent question: why there are two W3C standards, WebCGM and SVG, for Web-based graphics? In a nutshell, the reason has been summarized as "WebCGM for Web-based technical graphics, SVG for graphic arts and creative graphics." This simplistic formula, however, does nothing to satisfy curiousity about whatever underlying reasons and rationale there might be. The authors, both of whom are long-time practioners and product builders for technical graphics, gathered and presented data about the two formats, from the perspective of the requirements of technical graphics. The data look at both the technical match of the standards to the requirements of technical graphics, as well as considerations such as practical real-world interoperability. In the past year, the initial version of the analysis and comparison has had at least two results: technical additions and modifications to the SVG standard have been proposed, for the in-progress SVG 1.2 revision; and, various SVG blogs and other sources have disputed some of the results of the comparison study. The authors take a fresh look at the technical differences between the standards -- the gap is narrowing somewhat but not closing completely -- as well as take some time to examine some of the criticism of the 2003 analyses. In addition, an updated snapshot of the interoperability landscape shows significant new activity, although of notably different focus, around both WebCGM and SVG.
