Design of an efficient scalable vector graphics player for constrained devices

Abstract

The mobile industry, and in particular the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Consortium, has selected the Tiny profile of the scalable vector graphics (SVG) specification as a basis for the rich media format for mobile applications, leading the way to consumer electronics. Among the foreseen applications for SVG on constrained consumer electronics devices, maps, clip arts, animated cartoons and user interfaces are often cited. However, such devices are memory-constrained and have limited processing capabilities whereas vector graphics clip arts, animated cartoons or maps are described by large SVG documents. Such content may require heavy computations and important memory consumption, especially when applying models for animation and inheritance. In this paper, we present the design of a low-footprint and computationally efficient player for large and animated SVG documents. We describe the structures of the scene objects which enable low memory consumption and the compositing and rendering algorithms enabling fast playback. Finally, we evaluate the limitations of our proposal and compare our results with publically available desktop SVG players.