The GraPL Engine – History and Heritage

2001 - look what SVG can do!

The VML idea is fine as far as it goes, but it was never fully developed as a standard, and to be truthful the implementation is full of gaps and inconsistencies. Now we have a proper W3C standard in SVG which is largely a superset of VML and is far more complete and consistent. It also has even more in common with PostScript, so the GraPL functions to take the PostScript macro code and translate to SVG are really simple which also means they are extremely fast. But that is not all - SVG can do gradients and 3D effects and Adobe's viewer renders the results superbly. Now you can make charts that look like this:

Which requires a little under 6K of SVG code to describe, and imposes no extra load at all on your server! Does it go against all the principles in Tufte's book? I am not sure it does - the important thing here is the line and the effect of the graduated fill and 3D line actually adds clarity to the presentation. The next release of GraPL.NET is ready, just as soon as Adobe finalise beta-3 of the SVG viewer. It will be shipped with a selection of backdrops and filters which will turn simple data-driven charts into superb eye-catching graphics just by adding a few extra bytes. Backlit surface charts with translucent, shadowed headings? No problem ....

This technology is just around the corner - and GraPL has been ready for it since 1992. Don't miss it when it happens.