Warning: This is preliminary documentation for SVF2. You can find the SVF1 documentation at http://www.softsource.com/svf.



Simple Vector Format - SVF





About SVF Design Criteria Specification SVF XML API SVF Products

SVF Design Philosophy

  • Web-centric. SVF was the first vector format designed specifically for the Web, with the initial public specification published in 1994 and presented at the 2nd World Wide Web Conference.
    • Compact.
    • Streamable. An image can be displayed while the file is downloaded.
    • Every graphic object can be a 1 or 2 dimensional hyperlink.
    • Notifications can be used to transparently give the user more information when moving around the image.
    • XML version for integration with other web formats.
  • Simple. It's designed to be simple to create files but also simple to create a program that can read and display everything. Many other formats are so complex that most programs limit themselves to working with a subset of features, making the format less useful.
  • Powerful. While simple, it also contains a rich enough set of objects to be able to accurately represent graphic information as complex as CAD drawings. Additionally, custom user data can be added to files.