[pdftex] SVG into PDF

[Michael Malak]

Orlando Camargo Rodríguez wrote:
> Well, it sounds excellent, but if animation is not supported then all
> the interest in embedding the SVG into the PDF is lost. One can simply
> export the SVG to EPS or PDF and insert it in the main document as a
> graphic. In fact (in my humble opinion) what made the embedding
> atractive was the possibility of combining the excellent animation and
> interactivity features of SVG with the powerful text processing
> capabilities of TeX, plus the great portability of PDF.

Exactly.  And it's reasonably easy to use a text editor to write an 
interactive illustration in SVG, with reactions to mouse events and so 
on.  (Incidentally, the Flex website says that "Interactivity and 
scripting is not supported" when using Flex to include SVG in SWF.  Bummer.)

> Right now there
> are some excellent tools to make scientific documents "alive": form
> support is great and one can embed animations inside PDF (there are some
> nice examples in the TeX showcase - http://www.tug.org/texshowcase/).
> But forms and animation can not be combined together. And let's not
> forget that an SVG animation is very small when compared to an
> "standard" animation, made of frame by frame sequences.  This is why I
> think that it is a pity that such a great tool as the SVG plugin was so
> briefly supported by the Adobe Reader. 
> 
> Best regards 
> 
> Orlando Camargo Rodríguez 

What I still don't understand is why the samples from 
http://www.kevlindev.com/utilities/index.htm _do_ work.  You can see by 
reading the PDF files that they really do have the SVG code embedded as 
a stream; it's not the case that the SVG has been translated into 
equivalent PDF instructions.  So it seems as though the ability to show 
SVG is now built in to Acrobat (or at least comes with it 
automatically), and so I don't think that the problem is the lack of the 
SVG-Viewer plugin.

Mike Malak