For SVG rendering, we have few options: librsvg, as the most popular one,,and Lasem, maybe others. Both take an SVG file, parse it and render it over specified Cairo.Context.
GSVGtk is using librsvg by default, but have started to experiment with a new Rendered, written in Vala and using GSVG objects directly.
Using GSVG objects directly, means you can create programmatically an SVG image, then pass it directly to GSVGtk’s Renderer to render it to screen, create an image or a PDF, without write down to an string and then parse back in the renderer.
GSVGtk’s renderer, is not a fully compliant SVG 1.1 specification. It is enough for basic shapes and texts. Needs transformations at least for a more useful renderer for a canvas user like libgtkcanvas.
GSVGtk’s new renderer is in render branch if you want to try it.
For some reason libgrsvg creates an translucent area, while GSVGtk’s renderer is not, so in the video you can see how each shape is rendered clearly when it is drawn inside a Clutter.Actor, so now with this in shape, is possible to think to add some controls for shape editing in GSVGtk, now that invalidating each actor drawing area allows to render just the object it cares about, but without text intermediate format.