New Riders have published "Designing SVG Web Graphics," by Andrew Watt; version 0.24 of the GNOME SVG editor, Sodipodi, has been released.

Watt's book (Amazon link) is a introduction to the W3C's Scalable Vector Graphics language, with many examples. The target audience is web designers, not just programmers.

Sodipodi is a vector graphics editor using SVG as its native format. Still in early stage development, it is designed for the GNOME desktop for POSIX systems. There are many changes in the latest release, some highlights of which are listed here:

• Correctly load Illustrator-exported SVG
• Automatic backups
• User interface improvements: better color pickers, gradient dialogs
• Base64 inline image support

Sodipodi is licensed under the GNU GPL, and is available from SourceForge (source and RPMs) or packaged in Debian unstable.

• Sodipodi download
• Sodipodi screenshots