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SVG, Scalable Vector Graphics, is an application of XML. SVG is a markup language (based on XML specifications) for describing static and animated vector graphics. It is an open standard drafted by W3C - World Wide Web Consortium, that released the XML specifications.

History

The SVG 1.0 become a W3C recommendation in 2001.  In 2003, the specification was extended to SVG 1.1 to allow for modularization. Thus, the two subsets, SVG Tiny and SVG Basic became profiles of SVG 1.1. SVG Tiny 1.2 was released in 2006.  The SVG Full 1.2, that is said to contain specification for multipage documents is not released as of date.

Features 

The vector graphics have the distinctive feature of being scalable.  And hence, the word “scalable” seems to have been included in the acronym.  In actuality, vector graphics in general, and SVG in particular allows for other transformation than scaling like translation and rotation.

There are three types of elements that can exist in a SVG document/file.

• Vector graphic shapes like lines (straight and curved), circles/elipses, and bounded shapes like polygons
• Raster images
• Text

The SVG file, being a XML is very light when compared to a similar raster image.  And over that, they may be compressed using gzip compression. Since the XML is usually very verbose, the compressed SVG files (called SVGZ files) have much smaller file size.

The SVG allows for animation through scripting.

Compatibility 

The SVG format for vector graphics seems to have succeeded quite a bit in terms of providing a standard.  There are many vector graphics editors that can import and export the vector graphics in SVG format.  Many browsers like Firefox and Opera have inbuilt support to render SVG files.  Other browsers have plugins to do the same.

There are several SVG editors, both open source and proprietary.  The commercial softwares include Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Freehand, CorelDRAW, Paint Shop Pro, Xara Xtreme and many more.  Some of the free software include Xara Xtreme for Linux, OpenOffice.org Draw, Sodipodi and Inkscape (based on Sodipodi).  I have been using Inkscape quite extensively and you can see the works here at Splat and at KalaaLog.

But there seems to be a bit of friction from the vendors of commercial vector graphics software towards the acceptance of SVG as a standard.  It obviously is more profitable for them to have control over their own proprietary formats for vector graphics.

The acceptance of SVG hinges on the influence the creators and consumers of vector graphics can have on the stakeholders.  Some efforts are made, in terms of appeal to the public by SVGLogo, in order to get an indentification for the format - similar to what feeds have had in terms of syndication.