SVG Issues and Opportunities

[Doug Schepers <schepers@w3.org>]

Hi, ODF Folks-

Please allow me to introduce myself: I'm Doug Schepers, W3C Team Contact 
for the SVG and WebApps Working Groups.  I've joined the ODF TC to help 
with the integration of SVG, which I hope is a goal with broad sympathy 
in this group.  I sent a long message to office-comment [1] about the 
benefits of this for both ODF and SVG (and Rick Jelliffe sent a much 
more succinct one [2]).

The SVG WG realizes that this is not a one-way street.  If there is 
missing functionality in SVG that prevents it from being suitable, or 
confusion in how best to integrate SVG, then we will work on that on our 
side (I'm the editor of 2 specs that might be of interest in this 
regard, SVG Integration and SVG Connectors).

One specific challenge in the way that ODF uses SVG today is that it 
declares certain attributes of the Draw format as being in the SVG 
namespace; per the Namespaces in XML specification, SVG does not 
actually namespace its attributes (they are in the null NS), so in some 
sense it's not "meaningful" for ODF to do this (though I do understand 
the motivation).

Another point is that SVG content is not explicitly allowed, so 
roundtripping is not truly supported.

I will be happy to advise and even do some of the heavy lifting to help 
resolve these matters, and any others of an SVG nature.  I'm pretty good 
at writing spec text, and I can even be taught simple tasks.  I'm new to 
OASIS, and I'm not sure what the next steps are (forming a subcommittee, 
maybe?), so any advice is welcome.

I look forward to working with you.

[1] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office-comment/200903/msg00155.html
[2] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office-comment/200903/msg00098.html

Regards-
-Doug Schepers
W3C Team Contact, SVG and WebApps WGs