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SVG: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (2021)

SVG, short for <em>“scalable vector graphics”</em> is a format for, well, scalable vector graphics. In this article I summarize my opinion of the format, what its problems are and suggest what could be done to improve things.

I’ve been using SVG together with Inkscape regularly for a few years for sketches and graphics, and like to write it by hand to satisfy my love for precision and art through code. While it’s not a great language regarding user experience in my opinion, it is definitely meant for humans and has the necessary features to help making creating complex graphics easy. For people wanting to markup graphics through code there’s already stuff like Ti k Z, Haskell diagrams or Python matplotlib that could also export to the new minimal interchange format.

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