too bad really that SVG has to suck so hard

After a couple days of working with SVG, I have the feeling that nobody on the SVG working group gave any thought to how vector graphics could make interactive web GUIs better. It seems they were more concerned with lions, and tigers, and bars (oh my). In other words, SVG was designed to be primarily an image file format; a vector alternative to PNGs and JPGs.

That’s a shame, because SVG could be perfect as a means of escaping the rectangular tyranny of HTML and CSS. Think of the fun of being able to tilt photographs, fill text with gradients, or create circular buttons. Unfortunately, if you try to achieve these effects using SVG and XHTML together, you won’t be having any fun. You will be too busy doing geometry calculations by hand (which the SVG engine should be doing for you).

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