jQuery SVG vs. Raphael

For posterity, I'd like to note that I ended up choosing Raphael, because of the clean API and "free" IE support, and also because the active development looks promising (event support was just added in 0.7, for instance). However, I'll leave the question unanswered, and I'd still be interested to hear about others' experiences using Javascript + SVG libraries.

I'm a huge fan of Raphael and the development momentum seems to be going strong (version 0.85 was released late last week). Another big plus is that its developer, Dmitry Baranovskiy, is currently working on a Raphael charting plugin, g.raphael, which looks like its shaping up to be pretty slick (there are a few samples of the output from the early versions on Flickr).

However, just to throw another possible contender into the SVG library mix, Google's SVG Web looks very promising indeed (even though I'm not a big fan of Flash, which it uses to render in non-SVG compliant browsers). Probably one to watch, especially with the upcoming SVG Open conference.

I've recently used both Raphael and jQuery SVG - and here are my thoughts:

Raphael

Pros: a good starter library, easy to do a LOT of things with SVG quickly. Well written and documented. Lots of examples and Demos. Very extensible architecture. Great with animation.

Cons: is a layer over the actual SVG markup, makes it difficult to do more complex things with SVG - such as grouping (it supports Sets, but not groups). Doesn't do great w/ editing of already existing elements.

jQuery SVG

Pros: a jquery plugin, if you're already using jQuery. Well written and documented. Lots of examples and demos. Supports most SVG elements, allows native access to elements easily

Cons: architecture not as extensible as Raphael. Some things could be better documented (like configure of SVG element). Doesn't do great w/ editing of already existing elements. Relies on SVG semantics for animation - which is not that great.

SnapSVG as a pure SVG version of Raphael

SnapSVG is the successor of Raphael. It is supported only in the SVG enabled browsers and supports almost all the features of SVG.

Conclusion

If you're doing something quick and easy, Raphael is an easy choice. If you're going to do something more complex, I chose to use jQuery SVG because I can manipulate the actual markup significantly easier than with Raphael. And if you want a non-jQuery solution then SnapSVG is a good option.