>Well, yeah, but, the reason these things are slow is because optimizing them is kind of hard. Optimizing all cases is most certainly hard. Optimizing the most

>Well, yeah, but, the reason these things are slow is because optimizing them is kind of hard. Optimizing all cases is most certainly hard. Optimizing the most common cases -- the lowest hanging fruit -- is attainable (which is exactly what has happened and continues to happen with dynamic typing languages, since you point that out, and has happened substantially to the DOM, which itself is as complex or more complex than SVG but its layout optimization was obviously prioritized). In this case we're talking about static SVGs that -- with no change in zoom, context, or content (ergo nothing that would change their actual rendering at all) -- are completely rebuilt on every translation. This is true generally in the browser rendering engines of SVG, where compositional elements that could see caching are instead from scratch on each and every render.