Adobe® SVG Viewer for x86 Linux

Release Notes

Version 3.01 beta (Build 88)

Contents


About Adobe SVG Viewer

Adobe SVG Viewer 3.01 supports much of the W3C Recommended Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.0 Specification published on 4 September, 2001.

System Requirements

Due to the extereme diversity of Linux configurations it is not possible to guarantee that Adobe SVG Viewer for x86 Linux will run on any particular configuration. However, since v3.01 uses Netscape 4 plug-in architecture (which most browsers support) and has a fairly limited dependencies on system shared libraries, it should work over wide range of system configurations.


How to install Adobe SVG Viewer

  1. Before installing, please close any application which you have used to view SVG with an older version of Adobe SVG Viewer.
  2. Switch to root.
  3. Change directory to /usr/local (creating it if it doesn't exist). You should be able to use any other location, but it was not extensively tested.
  4. Unpack the installation package by running tar xzvf adobesvg-3.01-linux-i386.tar.gz.
  5. Run the script adobesvg-3.01/install.sh.

How to install plug-ins for use with unsupported Browsers

If you want to install plug-in for another browser which supports Netscape plug-ins, you can copy the file libNPSVG3.so in the installation folder to your browser's plugins folder (or make a symbolic link if the browser loads symbolically linked plug-ins - recent versions of Mozilla do not). The plug-in will try to find other libraries at the path in ADOBE_SVG_VIEWER_PATH environment variable (if it is set), or by either looking into /usr/local/adobesvg (which install.sh will symbolically link to your SVG plug-in instalation). If libNPSVG3.so is symbolically linked to the SVG plug-in installation folder and /proc filesystem is mounted, the plug-in will find the libraries through that symbolic link, so environment variable is not necessary.

If you want to install plug-in, but you don't have root access to the computer, switch to the folder where you want installation to be performed, run tar xzvf adobesvg-3.01-linux-i386.tar.gz followed by adobesvg-3.01/install.sh --local

Also, you can follow these steps:

  1. Before installing, please close any application which you have used to view SVG with an older version of Adobe SVG Viewer.
  2. Pick a place in the file system where you want the plug-in to be installed, change directory to that location.
  3. Unpack the installation package by running tar xzvf adobesvg-3.01-linux-i386.tar.gz. This will create adobesvg-3.01 subfolder - which is your SVG viewer installation folder. You can rename it if you want at this step.
  4. Create this folder: $HOME/.mozilla/plugins if it does not exist.
  5. Make sure that $HOME/.mozilla/plugins does not contain any SVG plug-in libraries (libNPSVG*.so), delete them if necessary.
  6. Copy libNPSVG3.so from the SVG plug-in installation folder to $HOME/.mozilla/plugins
  7. Set ADOBE_SVG_VIEWER_PATH to the full path of the SVG viewer installation folder. Make sure it is set up in your .cshrc or .profile (or other startup file) depending on the shell that you use.
Such setup was not extensively tested and is not fully supported.

How to view SVG files in your Web browser

Once you install Adobe SVG Viewer, you should be able to view supported SVG files in any supported Web browser.

You can use ADOBE_SVG_OPTIONS environment variable to affect certain settings in the viewer. ADOBE_SVG_OPTIONS can be set to a list of property values in the form of property=value, separated by commas. Here is the list of properties:

How to turn artwork into SVG

You can export SVG from Adobe Illustrator 9 and above. If you wish to incorporate JavaScript into your SVG you can create your artwork in Illustrator and link to JavaScript functions with the JavaScript Interactivity Palette and then export it as SVG or export from Illustrator and add any JavaScript interactivity animation or filter effects by hand. You can place SVG into Adobe GoLive 5 software using the Preview Mode or use the GoLive Outline and Source Views to modify the SVG source code. You may for example add or modify JavaScript add or update links to images fonts or audio files or add or update SVG elements and their attributes.

Tips and Hints


Known Problems with Adobe SVG Viewer

All Browsers

  1. You may need to set the environment variable ADOBE_SVG_VIEWER_PATH to the path where Adobe SVG Viewer was installed.
  2. Alert box and find dialog are not yet supported. Alert messages are printed to stderr. Note that some browsers (e.g., Konqueror) suppress these messages. You can normally see them in Mozilla if you run the binary without the startup script (i.e. /usr/lib/mozilla/mozilla).
  3. Save will always save the file as saved.svg in your home directory.
  4. Audio is not yet supported.
  5. Printing the full-screen svg will result in immediate spooling through lpr command, no print dialog is supported. Use ADOBE_SVG_OPTIONS environment variable to override (see above).
  6. Printing svg embedded in HTML will not work in all browsers. It should work in Mozilla starting from version 1.5. Embedded printing does not seem to be implemented in Konqueror in KDE 3.0.
  7. Title element works only in Mozilla 1.4 and above.
  8. Adobe SVG Viewer v3.0.x does not implement getCTM call correctly. It is a known problem and it was not fixed in this release to maintain compatibility across platforms.
  9. Access to browser scripting engine and scripting from HTML scripts in not supported.
  10. It's possible for elements near the edge of an SVG graphic to not receive a mouseout event.
  11. The SVG specification's support for masks has changed significantly since Illustrator 9 shipped, so Adobe SVG Viewer 2.0 and 3.01 might not display SVG masks exported from Illustrator 9.
  12. If you decline the End User License Agreement and then subsequently accept the EULA, the browser may hang. If you accept it the first time, there is no problem.
  13. If you invoked the context menu near the edge of the drawable SVG area, the menu may be clipped if it extends outside the drawable SVG area.


Contact Information

To report bugs and/or provide feedback, please go to the SVG Zone on Adobe.com.

Copyright Notice

© Copyright 1998-2001 by Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Adobe Illustrator and GoLive are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. SVG is a trademark (registered in numerous countries) of the World Wide Web Consortium; marks of the W3C are registered and held by its host institutions MIT INRIA and Keio. Windows and Windows NT are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Mac and TrueType are trademarks of Apple Computer Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.