did you look at the sublanguage for paths? It's quite compact if you want compact - the other primitives (like circle, ellipse etc.) are more verbose but IMHO s

did you look at the sublanguage for paths? It's quite compact if you want compact - the other primitives (like circle, ellipse etc.) are more verbose but IMHO sometimes better if you want the SVG file to be read by humans. Besides, XML gives you full DOM-access - that's the thing where I see the true difference as compared to Canvas. The programming model is much more like "usual" client-side Javascript programming - append elements to parents, react to events that happen on elements etc., whereas Canvas has a fairly imperative programming model. So, to cut a long story short - if you are offended by the XML and verbosity give it another chance and look "through" the XML to discover the declarative nature of SVG and the corresponding programming model...