The open source Apache Software Foundation (ASF) have announced their release of a beta version of a Java toolkit that will allow developers to build web-based applications to handle scalable vector graphics (SVG) content.

It is part of a project run by Sun Microsystems where they donated code including the SVGGraphics2D generator software that allows Java technology-based applications to place their graphics in the SVG format.

The overall project is referred to as Batik that includes other modules such as an SVG viewer that can also be integrated into any Java technology-based application, the Document Object Model in SVG and SVG transcoders that will allow these SVG images to be converted into other formats such as JPEG or PNG.

Sun Microsystems have also contributed code to previous Apache projects such as The Jakarta Project, that is based on Java Server Pages technology and Java Servlets.