The currently (March 2015) valid specification is SVG 1.1, with SVG 2.0 on the way, and many of the new features are already implemented in Inkscape and many viewers (like web browsers). The tags, elements and attributes which can be used and understood by vector graphics editing and viewing programs are determined in the SVG specification. The SVG file format uses these structures to represent visual data.

If you ever used (X)HTML to create a website, you already know the main structural elements: a tree-like structure, tags, elements and attributes. It is based on XML (Extensible Markup Language), also a W3C standard format, which is a generic markup language developed to represent arbitrary data in human- and machine-readable format.

It is maintained and developed by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), the main international standards organization for the web. SVG (acronym for 'Scalable Vector Graphics') is a free and open, standardized file format for vector graphics. We collected some information here which we hope will get you started easily. For example, to make your own extensions, you will need some experience in climbing up and down the XML tree - and if you want to work on some of the core Inkscape functions, you might even have to dive deep into the maths of matrices and Bézier curves. Because the SVG vector file format is Inkscape's central format, understanding the basics of SVG will be helpful when contributing to Inkscape's development.

Inkscape tutorial svg