The World Wide Web Consortium this week acknowledged the Vector Markup Language (VML) proposal jointly submitted by Autodesk Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Macromedia Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Visio Corp.
The Vector Markup Language was designed by the group to bring high-quality, editable 2-D vector graphics to the Web.
According to the group, VML will make it faster and easier to create Web pages by enabling developers to cut and paste vector graphics from one
application to another, without any loss of quality or editing ability.
The VML format is based on the Extensible Markup Language (XML), a new flexible and open text-based language that is becoming more important to developers every day.
The VML proposal was built on industry standards such as XML 1.0, HTML
4.0 and CSS 2.0, and represents the efforts by the five companies to advance
open Web specification standards through the W3C.
The proposed VML standard will enable developers to:
- cut and paste vector graphics across different authoring tools
- deliver fully integrated, scalable graphics–smooth lines can be delivered because VML graphics use paths based on cubic Bizier curves with faster download speed
- utilize fully integrated VML graphics that have the ability to interact and scale with other elements on the Web page
- hyperlinks may be added to the VML elements
For more information about the VML proposal or standards practices, visit the
Web site of the World Wide Web Consortium.