W3C Last Call Working Drafts for SVG Print 1.2 (Language, Primer)

W3C announced that the SVG Working Group has published Last Call Working
Drafts for the "SVG Print 1.2, Part 2: Language" and "SVG Print 1.2,
Part 1: Primer" specifications. The "Language" document defines features
of the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Language that are specifically for
printing environments. The "Primer" explains the technical background
and gives guidelines on how to use the SVG Print specification with SVG
1.2 Tiny and SVG 1.2 Full modules for printing; it is purely informative
and has no conformance statements. Because of its scalable, geometric
nature, SVG is inherently better suited to print than raster image formats.
The same geometry can be displayed on screen and on a printer, with
identical layout in both but taking advantage of the higher resolution
of print media. The same colors can be output, using an ICC-based color
managed workflow on the printer and an sRGB fallback approximation on
screen. This has been true since SVG 1.0, and so SVG has been used in
print workflows (for example, in combination with XSL FO) as well as on
screen. However, SVG also has dynamic, interactive features such as
declarative animation, scripting, timed elements like audio and video,
and user interaction such as event flow and link activation. None of these
are applicable to a print context. SVG 1.1 gives static and dynamic
conformance classes, but further guidance on what exactly SVG Printers
should do with such general content is helpful. The SVG Print
specification defines processing rules for handling such general purpose
content which was not designed to be printed, but which may be
encountered anyhow. It is possible to generate SVG which is exclusively
intended for print (for example, a printer which natively understands SVG).
This content might be created in an illustration program, or it might
be an output from a layout program, such as an XSL-FO renderer; or it
might be generated by an SVG Print driver. W3C's Graphics Activity has
been developing graphics specifications for over ten years: "Scalable
Vector Graphics (SVG), the current effort of the Activity, brings the
powerful combination of interactive, animated two-dimensional vector
graphics and Extensible Markup Language (XML). WebCGM 2.0 is used mainly
in industrial and defence technical documents. Earlier work was concerned
with Portable Network Graphics (PNG) and with WebCGM 1.0."