Nice things with SVG

SVG feels like a very underexplored and underused territory. You can do so many things with it. It really depends on your imagination. But you’ll possibly need to “hardcore” a lot of stuff, so yeah, depends on the use case as well.

I agree. I’m sure there’s limitations, but svg feels more like a wysiwyg for web design than css

Seems like it hits limits really fast — management/legibility gets difficult without groups and layers and performance doesn’t seem to scale well.

Two usages which I thought were interesting:

- adding toolpath information so as to use Flash as the engine for a Computer Aided Manufacturing tool: https://github.com/Jack000/PartKAM

- (this was my project along w/ Edward R. Ford) adding hyperlinks to part lists to highlight parts in an assembly diagram: https://github.com/shapeoko/Docs --- unfortunately, that doesn't seem to work anymore.

  without groups and layers

As distinct from `<g>`?

One thing i'd like to see is an entire site built with SVG and JS without any HTML at all. It's possible but i haven't seen anyone do it yet.

It's a fun format that's easy to generate, but after trying to do complicated things with it.. you kind of understand why. It's underused b/c

- Complex graphics render different in different browsers. So you can't rely on it shows up the same (never had the same issue with a PDF for example)

- There are quite a few renderers but they typically don't implement large parts of SVG b/c it's too complex.. So you can never really be sure what parts are "safe" to use.

- Large complex graphics display extremely slowly (again, compared to a PDF)

- There is basically one editor.. Inkscape. And it's got it's own quirks and doesn't match Chrome/Firefox's behavior. Ex: You can add arrows to lines in Inkscape and they don't display in Firefox

It's also just got too many weird corner case limitations. For instance you can embed a SVG in another SVG (say to make a composite diagram). But you can't embed a SVG in to an SVG in to an SVG. On the web if you inline or link an SVG you also end up with different behaviors

so how can you know it's actually possible?

> There is basically one editor.. Inkscape.

Do you mean in terms of open source vector editors? As there a wide variety of tools with SVG authoring/editing capability, among the most well-known being Adobe Illustrator, Sketch, Affinity Photo/Designer, even some web apps are available that were made for online SVG editing (eg: SVGator).

Inkscape, like some tools such as Affinity's, adds its own XML namespace with custom attributes and values, though for arrows I would expect it to use native `marker` elements.

It's certainly true that with SVG's flexibility and particularly with cross-browser handling differences/bugs it can become its own task to get consistent presentation when doing more complex things with it. Still very fond of the format.

Browsers will render SVG files. SVG files can link to other SVG files. Just need to configure the server to serve SVG by default — most servers don't but it's an easy config change.

Actually just found one, via an old stack overflow post. Only a three page test, but proves the point:

https://svg.nicubunu.ro

Inkscape is the only major vector graphics editor that relies on SVG as its native file format. Most other apps are merely allowing you to import/export SVG files which is often a lossy process (e.g. vector objects with filter effects might get rasterized).

SVGator is focused primarily on animation and it's rather pricey. Boxy SVG might be a better choice if you are looking for a web-based SVG editor (disclaimer: I'm the developer).

No javascript here though

I've used SVG in the past to work around limitations in css alignment (cloth before and after new layouts made it unnecessary--I don't write CSS enough to remember how they work, but adding text to a quick drawing in inkscape is fairly trivial)