Stirring XML: Visualisations in SVG

The idea of separating content from its presentation information was one of the key aspects in developing Extensible Markup Language (XML) and its supporting technologies such as e.g. Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL). XML vocabularies are not much good for human viewing and navigating; they do not need to be and they (primarily) have not be designed with this purpose in mind. Instead, transformations from a (source) XML vocabulary into a (target) visualisation format, e.g. Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), have been used in order to present the information in an easy-to-understand layout. Nevertheless, most of today's XML vocabulary visualisations are intra-media transformations, e.g. from a text-based representation to a textbased representation. Future transformations will include inter-media types, e.g. from text-tographic or text-to-audio. What role does Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) play in these scenarios? This paper does not provide detailed programmatic explanations rather it demonstrates design and solutions for data and information visualisation using SVG images. It outlines the concepts of one inter-media transformations (e.g. from text to graphic) using different approaches. All work was commenced in the last two years at the Department of Computer Science, Trinity College Dublin (TCD) (Ireland) and subsequently submitted and published as BSc Final Year Thesis's by the mentioned authors. A PDF version of this paper is available (StirringXML.pdf).