[theora] Theora in SVG+JavaScript?

[Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves]

Sam, please, stop right there.  SVG is supposed to become the new
standard for Internet graphics.  Trying to turn it into a bunch of
other stuff will not only not work, it will destroy the format itself.
 It's not just you, but a lot of people who are trying to do that.
Browser developers like the people from Opera and Mozilla are warning
against this, as well, so do consider my points below.

SVG is a format for vector graphics using XML.  It's not a container
format.  The most similar thing to SVG that you will find on Adobe's
proprietary shelves is .ai, the native format for Adobe Illustrator.

SWF on the other hand is not just a vector graphics format, no.  It's
a container format for vectors, ECMAScript, Video, Audio, and a
timeline.

I think it's insane to attempt to turn SVG into a SWF competitor.  It
just isn't supposed to be one.  And as crazy as it sounds, it's
probably easier to make Ogg do what you want from SVG, than the other
way around.  This is still crazy talk, but Ogg IS a container format,
and a streamable one at that.  Add some ECMAScript, some SVG graphics
and some Theora video, and that's probably the best solution to
compete with SWF right now.  That and Java.  It's easy to see why
Flash's everywhere.  There just isn't any real competitor for the SWF
format right now.

Hope that helps,
Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves

On 1/28/07, S. A. Allen <manager at atshop3d.com> wrote:
> So far, the only metadata that has been able to be embedded in SVG are
> image formats - PNG, JPG, and GIF (although I stay away from GIF like the
> plague). Other image formats like WMF or TIFF can be embedded but output
> would be at the mercy of the SVG viewer. I've tried many methods to get
> some audio working in SVG but no go so far. The only way--as far as I
> know--to get anything video-like in SVG is to use a series of PNG/JPG
> images and display them in sequence - it's just a shame that audio
> wouldn't be there.
>
> Most open-source browsers are able to read SVG with ease, and Opera
> aswell. Internet Explorer has limited ability to read SVG, although that
> is with IE7. There is an Adobe SVG plugin available to overcome this, but
> Adobe will be dropping support for this in Janurary 2008 -
> http://www.adobe.com/svg/viewer/install/
>
> On a side note, if embedding a video in SVG is possible, being an XML
> based file format allows only ASCII characters, which means a binary file
> to would need to be converted to Base64 encoding, and that would make the
> file around 4 times its normal size. The only way around this is to find a
> standard way of compressing the file such as "filename.svg.gz" or
> "filename.sgv.zip" or... I'm sure you get the idea.
>
> I've been using SVG for some time now and the only way for things to
> advance in SVG is to make an open-source SVG plugin that supports Theora,
> but I'd try as much as possible to stick with W3C standards which, at the
> moment, only outputs text, vector shapes and raster images.
>
> -Sam