Re: HTML 5 Canvas spec

Hi David:

 

David Porter wrote:

 

".[...]Is it a threat or complement
to one's SVG work?  [...] 'A 3D Exploration of the HTML Canvas Element
Greg Travis, DevX.com' "
 
 

I thought someone else might make a stab at this but given that they
didn't I guess I will.  Maybe I'll say something wrong just on purpose
to see if we can persuade lurkers to join some of the conversations.

 

When I found out about <canvas> I thought it was someone's attempt to
sabotage SVG. The Apple folks who promoted it tried to convince others
that it was something entirely different (using lots of fancy jargon to
make their point). I remained very skeptical.

 

Then someone (like maybe Anne from Opera) wrote something in the HTML5
discussions that basically said - hey mellow out - they both do useful
stuff. So I have mellowed a bit and concede the point. <canvas> is
likely to be a really fast way of blittiing pixels onto the screen and
playing with them. Opera and maybe others have been playing with 3D
canvas operations - if only we could put an <svg> into a <canvas> so
that we could read the pixels back from our <svg> or implement the get
Pixel value and put Pixel value operations from <canvas> then we'd have
something.

 

I think the experience with Photoshop and Illustrator indicates that
it's a lot easier to put pixel stuff into a vector environment than to
do it the other way around.

 

My only concern remaining was that HTML5 would adopt <canvas> and ignore
<svg> in such a way that implementers might be able to continue to
ignore SVG. Doug seems optimistic that that won't happen, and he knows
how this stuff works, so I think we can relax a bit more now.

 

In the long run, with the fact that Google now supports (some) SVG in
Chrome, it may soon be a moot point. 

 

I would be delighted if some one could put some really simple and some
really cool demos in the SVG-wiki that show a) how to use canvas and b)
how to combine the use of canvas with that of svg. The symbiosis could
be very cool!

 

David