Creating SVG Documents with Xfig
SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) allows you to publish diagrams as vectors and render them on any capable client. Vectors are simply lines between points (vectors have a direction, mathematically, but I don't see how that applies here). Xfig is a vector drawing program. If you look in a .fig file, you will see points. These points are connected with styles of lines, etc., and Xfig then renders them according to the FIG file spec. Note here that Xfig is not the only program that can render FIG files. Now, mostly, with the web, an image is not represented as a vector. That is, if you view a box, it is a bitmap (.gif, .jpg) that is a picture of a box, rather than the four corners of the box and information about the type of line connecting the points. With the SVG specification, though, browsers can now simply send information about the points and the connecting lines instead of sending a bitmap. Xfig can export a diagram directly to an SVG document. This will be quite useful as more and more browsers become capable of viewing this format. For now, it probably isn't the best format to use, since the support isn't too great yet.I found that Firefox version 1.6a1 worked OK. Here is an example FIG diagram:
Just select file/export to convert to an SVG file:
Here is how the document looks when rendered by my Firefox browser:
I used Xfig 3.2.5 alpha 5 to create this, and the output file is different than with Xfig 3.2.4. I would imagine, since 3.2.4 is so old, that it would be worth it to upgrade to the newer version of Xfig, despite its alpha designation. If you would like to see if your browser can render this, here is the file in XML/SVG format:
Example XML/SVG File
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