Combining efforts from CSIRO, Sun, INRIA, ILOG and Kodak, the Apache XML project has released Batik, a Java-based SVG toolkit.

The aims of the project are to

... give developers a set of core modules which can be used together or individually to support specific SVG solutions. Example modules are, SVG parsers, SVG generators and SVG DOM implementations. Another ambition for the Batik project is to make it highly extensible (for example, Batik allows the developer to handle custom SVG tags).

Batik comprises three main components:

• SVG Viewer: a viewer application allowing zooming, panning and rotation of images.
• Rasterizer: produces bitmap images from SVG source images
• Graphics2D Generator: allows Java applications to export their graphic displays as SVG

Regarding the status of Batik's support for the SVG candidate recommendation, their web page states

At this time, Batik provides a good implementation for all the SVG static features, supports linking, and has some scripting support, even though dynamic modification of SVG documents is not yet available and animation is not supported.

Batik can be downloaded from the Apache web site. An FAQ is also available, answering common questions about the project.