File Formats

contributed by Will Pollard, September 04

Scalable Vector Graphics

Adobe are well aware that PDF has to remain an open standard to get support from governmment etc. There is now an ISO standard on PDF-X for print workflows. Many commercial suppliers with an alternative to Adobe.

At Seybold Amsterdam there was a lot of support for SVG - Scalable Vector Graphics. Adobe and Macromedia etc. are on the committees but the standard is not defined as a vendor decides on a new release.

http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/

Based on XML, SVG has a lot of advantages on the web. For print there are some problems in controlling exact appearance so I think PDF is still better. However there is work on ways to create PDF from SVG

link direct to a PDF presentation http://www.acrobat-services.co.uk/auf/PD03_j_maerki.pdf

The general opinion earlier this year seemed to be that the Apache version was not as good as the ones you have to pay for, but then the version number implied a fairly low claim.

More stuff

http://www.acrobat-services.co.uk/auf/ The Acrobat User Forum includes some commercial discussion far away from open source, but you can take what you like from it.

There will be a Seybold event in Amsterdam next June. Assuming there is another Penguin Day in London or somewhere close to Amsterdam or somewhere in Europe, I suggest there be some contact between the various discussions. This could be an exchange of links to material or in actual space. This is a vague suggestion but I have recently concluded that vagueness contributes to the achievement of learning aims. More on this if provoked by other comment...

http://www.radiovague.com

Will Pollard will.pollard at gmail.com

Update

now found a link re: SVG, Macromedia and phones - seems a similar debate to Adobe and PDF: http://oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/5212

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