1. SVG Tutorial
2. SVG Examples
3. A Simple SVG Example
4. Displaying SVG in Web Browsers
5. SVG Icons
6. SVG Coordinate System
7. SVG svg element
8. SVG g element
9. SVG rect element
10. SVG circle element
11. SVG ellipse element
12. SVG line element
13. SVG polyline element
14. SVG polygon element
15. SVG path element
16. SVG marker element
17. SVG text element
18. SVG tspan element
19. SVG tref element
20. SVG textpath element
21. SVG switch element
22. SVG image element
23. SVG a element
24. SVG defs Elements
25. SVG symbol Element
26. SVG use Element
27. SVG and CSS - Cascading Style Sheets
28. SVG Stroke
29. SVG Fill
30. SVG Viewport and View Box
31. SVG Animation
32. SVG Scripting
33. SVG Transformation
34. SVG Gradients
35. SVG Fill Patterns
36. SVG Clip Path
37. SVG Masks
38. SVG Filters

The SVG <tref> element is used to reference texts that are defined by the <defs> element. This way you can display the same text multiple times in your SVG image, without having to include the text more than once.

Here is an example:

<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
     xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">

    <defs>
        <text id="theText">A text that is referenced.</text>
    </defs>

    <text x="20" y="10">
        <tref xlink:href="#theText" />
    </text>
    <text x="30" y="30">
        <tref xlink:href="#theText" />
    </text>
</svg>

And here is the resulting image:

Notice how the <text> element (inside the <defs> element) has an id attribute. This id attribute value is referenced from the xlink:href attribute of the <tref> element.