User:Dschwen/SVG explanation

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[edit] Great print quality

SVG is a vector based format. A circle will always be a cirlce, as opposed to a seemingly round conglomerate of square pixels. Aliasing is a non-issue with SVG. Why is infinite resolution needed?

• High-quality reproductions. Wikimedia material should be suitable for other media than current computer monitors. There are already several lines of printed Wikipedia content.
• Future-proofness. Nowadays screens may have very limited resolutions, but they are constantly increasing. Why risk having to redraw a diagram because it's low-resolution has become obsolete?

[edit] Easy text editing

SVG is an XML based format. That means it can be opened using a text editor for quick adjustments. Every text string that appears in an SVG image can be thus be easily modified.

• Translations. Wikipedia is more than en.wikipedia.org. By providing SVG diagrams you can easily double the potential userbase.
• Corrections. Maybe it is a typo, or some factual inaccuracy. An SVG image can quickly be corrected by anyone. This is much closer to the Wikiprinciple than requesting a PSD source file from the original author (who might not be around anymore).

[edit] Additional functionality

SVG allows for additional features that are simply impossible to achieve with other image formats.

• Hyperlinking. Picture elements in SVG images can be made clickable. Body parts in an anatomy diagram could easily be hyperlinked to their corresponding Wikipedia articles.
• Semantic structure. Like the semantic web with the use of stylesheets SVG images can be a lot more than just a graphic representation. Labeling elements of the diagrams could make them searchable.

While some of the possibilities are not yet realized providing diagrams as SVG makes it easier to extend and expand them in the future.