Hi Dave,

> In this case the overlap between SVG and <canvas> seems
> mostly harmless (except for the browser bloat).

Well, the other harm would come just from considerable browser development time sunk into some area that may not pan out.

The level of complexity involved with the whole SVG object model seems to be pretty extensive, for example there are 491 files in WebKit's \svg folder... That's a huge amount of effort in development, testing, bug fixing, ...

Certainly it's true that it is hard to know in advance which particular technology is going to become highly used or not... But on the other hand having too many huge mechanisms implemented and needed to be maintained can make it harder for browsers to be nimble as well.

- Michael