Looking to help high-end handheld gadgets better adapt to the way video games and other graphics-oriented software are displayed, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Tuesday recommended Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 and Mobile SVG profiles be anointed standards.

SVG is an open file format that enables two-dimensional images to be displayed in XML pages on the Web. SVG enables the viewing of an image on a computer display of any size and resolution. SVG also allows text within images to be recognized as such, so that the text can be located by a search engine and easily translated into other languages. Simply, SVG aims to help accomodate rich graphics that are viewed by users of the looming generation of souped up mobile devices, or 3G-based (define) cell phones or pocket PCs.

SVG 1.1 separates SVG into reusable building blocks, and SVG Mobile recombines them in such a way that they are ideal for mobile devices, such as cell phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs).

The news met with the approval of Adobe, which sees SVG as a potential replacement to competitor Macromedia's Flash technology, and features SVG across its publishing product line.

"Adobe is very pleased that the SVG 1.1 and SVG Mobile specifications have become W3C Recommendations," the company said in a public statement. "SVG is a fundamental element of Adobe's Network Publishing strategy that will allow precise delivery of visually rich, personalized content in an XML syntax."

The W3C said the graphical capabilities of SVG 1.1 are the same as those of the SVG 1.0, which has been a W3C recommendation since September 2001. The difference, the group said, is in the way the script is designed. The Document Type Definition (DTD) was a single unit in SVG 1.0, while in SVG 1.1, the DTD is divided into more agile building blocks that can be put together in different ways.