SVG Communities
SVG, the W3C's way of representing vector graphics in the web, has found its friends in various areas, even completely "unwebby" ones like desktop environments.
So, who is using SVG? I'd like to give a short overview over the largest groups of people (to my knowledge) and how they use this XML based vector graphics format.
Web Designers
SVG, although designed for usage on the web, is not widely used on it today. This is mainly caused by the very slow adoption of the recommendation by browser vendors. As of early 2009 Opera, Konqueror and Safari are almost finished with implementing, Firefox has a good deal, but important parts are missing, and the IE crew still sticks with its proprietary VML solution, but first cracks appear.
So, one can see a slow, but accelerating increase in using vector graphics on the web, that are not Flash based. Especially JavaScript libraries like, e.g., Raphael, that serve as an abstraction layer between IE and the rest of browsers enable nowadays' web developers to start using SVG for representing their content.
Inkscape, Linux and Open Clipart
In the open source world, Inkscape is tending to become the GIMP of vector graphics. Fortunately, Inkscape's native file format is SVG. So it is no wonder, that today's Linux desktop environments like KDE and Gnome heavily rely on this standard.
Especially KDE 4 has very strongly built around artwork in SVG format. At the same time, many SVG based icons and cliparts are published under public domain or CreativeCommons licenses and form a solid stock of graphics to let other designers build upon.
The Wikipedia
No encyclopedia would be complete without schematic pictures of complex issues. The Wikipedia encourages its users for those tasks to use SVG. These SVG files then get rendered on the server as PNG images for display, but nonetheless the advantages in the backend are huge.
Pictures based on SVG are very easily translated or used as basis for further schemas. A good example are maps, where a generic SVG map can be easily colored by other users to generate informative viewings of arbitrary data.
Cartographers
Cartographers were some of the first adopters of SVG as a file format to store data in. They use the powerful path syntax of SVG to describe cartographic data and display maps. In combination with JavaScript and SVG enabled browsers they can very easily build highly dynamic applications for showing complex data.
The publicly most noted example is certainly Google Maps, that uses SVG for some overlays. But there are also many specialiced services. Carto.net gives a nice overview. For rendering of maps I'd like to mention OpenStreetMap.org as well. They do a terrific job at showing free geographic data to all of us.
Conclusions
In short these are some major groups that found their usage for SVG. You see, that this file format, that was once thought of bringing vector graphics solely to web browsers, now finds many friends in very unsuspected areas. If you also use SVG in an unusual way, feel free to add your way of dealing with it in the comments!
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Comments
#1 SVG Communities
Academics such as myself who use SVG along with MathML to produce materials such as notes and tests. I also use XHTML5 elements with CSS to produce a particular look, and MathMl embedded in SVG. I hand code in order to produce exactly the look I want with minimal code. At present I am assembling a custom built physical science text using HTML5 and XHTML5.
#2 yes, I do something similar
yes, I do something similar here: manuel-strehl.de/thesis, but I guess it's more a niche. (Although Maths software like gnuplot and Maple do SVG export, it's of, let's say, mixed quality)
#3 This is mainly caused by the
This is mainly caused by the very slow adoption of the travesti recommendation by browser vendors. As of early 2009 Opera, Konqueror and Safari are almost finished with implementing, Firefox has a good deal, but important parts are missing, and the IE crew still sticks with its proprietary VML solution, but first cracks appear.