Secret Origin of SVG The Secret Origin of SVG In the early days
of the Web, there was an explosion of different formats and
extensions to HTML. From early on, it was clear that a vector
graphic format for the Web would be useful. Chris Lilley wrote
up a document for general requirements for vector graphics in
1996. By 1998, the landscape had settled somewhat, and there
were six competing submissions to the W3C in the Web vector
graphics area that year: - Web Schematics, from CCLRC - PGML,
from Adobe, IBM, Netscape, and Sun - VML, by Autodesk, Hewlett-
Packard, Macromedia, and Microsoft - Hyper Graphics Markup
Language, by Orange, PCSL, and PRP - WebCGM, from Boeing, CCLRC,
Inso, JISC, and Xerox - DrawML, from Excosoft As a result, the
SVG WG was chartered. The different submitters had different
ideas on what to do with their specifications. Adobe et al said
that PGML was just a proposal, and were happy to have it
modified in any way by W3C. Microsoft said that VML was
documentation of an already implemented an