WMS-SVG: XML Parsing Error: not well-formed -- still future for SVG?

[Barend Köbben]

Hi,
 
To start with your last question:
> And BTW: where are we with SVG nowadays? I heard that Adobe stopped 
> working/developing SVG? Is this the end of SVG?
 
SVG is an Open Format by the W3C, not Adobe's. The reason they stopped devolping their plugin (not the language) is that they acquired Macromedia and now are betting all on Flash. 
Adobe's SVG Viewer was already sort of dead, I guess the last real development was in 2002 or so. Luckily nowadays we have 'native' implementations of SVG (it's just anotehr XML after all) inside Opera 9+ (almost completely covers the spec) and Firefox 1.5+ (same, except for animation). The ASV plugin still works (and will remain downloadable) if you need InternetExplorer, and even there are rumours (but not much more) that that will support native SVG in v.8... Besides teh comapny Emia is working on a new plugin/standalone viewer called Renesis.
So, not the end of SVG at all....
 
The reason your FF doesn't display theSVG made by MapServer is in the non-standardized way the Mapserver sends the SVG, which was working in the more forgiving ASV plugin of IE, but not in native FireFox SVG. Two options: repair that or disable the native SVG (type about:config in the URL and set svg.enabled to false) and use the ASV plugin (v3.2 works in the win version, not in the Mac version alas). 
If you want to use the native SVG, you should make sure the MIME type used by the webserver is correct and you don't use the DOCTYPE declaration (see further on http://jwatt.org/svg/authoring/). 
 
Still, I have found teh SVG support of MapServer only so-so... 
 
<start shameless plug>
If you are looking for an SVG-only WMS there's also RIMapperWMS to consider, although it's limited to exactly that and we just started it: http://kartoweb.itc.nl/rimapper/
</start shameless plug>
 
-- 
Barend Köbben 
International Institute for Geo-information Sciences and  Earth Observation (ITC) 
PO Box 6, 7500AA Enschede (The Netherlands) 
ph: +31-(0)534874253; mobile: +31-(0)622344955

________________________________

From: UMN MapServer Users List on behalf of Stefan Schwarzer
Sent: Wed 21/02/2007 13:49
To: MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU
Subject: [UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS] WMS-SVG: XML Parsing Error: not well-formed -- still future for SVG?



Hmmm... strange. Followed the doc ( http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/docs/
howto/svg-howto/view ) and in principal I'd say everything is ok. But 
Firefox (both on Win and Mac) do declare to have problems with it:

XML Parsing Error: not well-formed
Location: http://gridca.grid.unep.ch/cgi-bin/mapserv?map=/www/
geodataportal/htdocs/mod_map/geo_svg.map&mode=map&layers=gdp_capita
Line Number 1, Column 1:?

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When I download the file and open it in AI it displays nicely.

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And the SVG code seems to be correct...

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<svg version="1.1" width="600" height="300" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/
2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">

<!-- START LAYER gdp_capita -->
<path fill="#e6e6e6" d="M 402 91 L 402 91 L 402 91 L 402....

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Thanks for any hints.

Stef