Re: Updated Summary of Discussions about FX work items

On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 6:19 PM, Alex Danilo <alex@abbra.com> wrote:
> --Original Message--:
>>On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 4:24 PM, Alex Danilo <alex@abbra.com> wrote:
>>> However,  there's been a large thread on www-style that I've stayed away from that
>>> relates to the angles used for CSS gradients.
>>>
>>> CSS3 gradients is specifying 0 degrees to be vertical, i'e. poiting up along the Y axis.
>>> Their rationale is that it's like a compass.
>>>
>>> SVG uses the X-axis as 0 degrees, like in maths, architectural drawing and many other
>>> things.
>>>
>>> The angle concept in CSS gradients is incompatible with SVG's model so perhaps someone
>>> who is in both domains can point this out to them.
>>
>>The decision to use bearing angles (0deg is up, positive is CW) was
>>based on overwhelming preference for it expressed in a poll of authors
>>which got about 100 responses.
>
> A statistician would take the 100 responses against the potential number
> of authors and classify that result as having  a _very_ low confidence interval.

That's not at all true.  Sampling is a bog-standard statistical
technique, and definitely doesn't require you to sample a large
percentage of a population, so long as your sample is "appropriately
large" (in practice, this is somewhere above 10 and below 100 usually)
and you have reason to believe your sample is representative.


> A sweeping generalization could be that those 100  responses were from
> people that flunked math, didn't do any technical drawing or tried to build
> a driveway with an elevation of 5 degrees then promptly drove off a cliff...

I'm not sure why you'd think that's a reasonable generalization.  In
any case, it's irrelevant, as we're not trying to make solutions for
those groups, we're trying to make solutions for web developers,
whatever that ends up meaning.  We drew the sample from people who
follow @css3info on Twitter, which I believe is reasonably
representative of skilled CSS-using web authors as a whole.


>>Where precisely are angles used in SVG?  So far I've found the following:
>>
>>1. glyph-orientation-*
>>2. rotate
>>3. translate (the rotate() and skew*() commands)
>>4. azimuth
>>5. elevation
>>6. orient
>>7. d (the elliptical arc commands)
>>
>>In 1-3 and 6-7, the angle indicates a CW rotation, not a direction.
>>This is compatible with angles in linear-gradient().
>>
>>In 4 and 5, the angle indicates a direction.  4 indicates a CW
>>rotation from the x axis, which is slightly incompatible with angles
>>in linear-gradient().  5 indicates a rotation from the plane of the
>>screen toward the viewer, which can't be compared with angles in
>>linear-gradient().
>
> If you do orienteering and your world is a compass then it makes some sense.
> If you do maths, or engineering drawing or are a builder, architect, plane
> designer looking at your cockpit indicators you might consider 0 degrees
> to be in the horizontal plane.

In many of these instances, you also consider 90deg to point upwards,
which is contrary to SVG.

Unless I'm missing something, though, only a single usage of angles in
SVG is inconsistent here.  One usage is incomparable, and the rest are
just rotations, not directions, and go CW, same as CSS angles and the
other uses of SVG angles.

> SVG gradients:
>
> http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/pservers.html
>
> When linear with _no_ explicit direction specified assume:
> x1, y1, y2 == 0%
> x2 == 100%
>
> i.e. a vector in the horizontal direction.
>
> Applying a gradientTransform of rotate(5) would rotate the gradient
> 5 degrees from the horiztonal plane.
>
> Thus, this is different enough that authors would get confused.

Similar considerations apply to CSS gradients.  We did not believe it
was confusing, since you don't normally set the direction via
transforms.  Is it equally confusing that setting a gradientTransform
of rotate(5) along with x1,x2,y1 of 0% and y2 of 100% results in a
gradient 5deg CW from a down-pointing vector?


> How many of your 100 respondents have authored any SVG gradient markup?
> It would be nice to know.

I have no idea for that poll.  For other similar polls I've explicitly
asked for people with little or no experience with gradients, so I can
capture the natural intuition, rather than whatever they'd already
learned.


> Regardless, some people in the world went to school and they were taught
> about radians, polar co-ordinates amongst many other things, see:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_coordinate_system
> and
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radian
>
> All these co-ordinate systems make 0 degrees along the X-axis
> or horizontal if you prefer.

As I said above, the math-polar system does *not* match SVG, as
positive angles go CCW in it.


> As I said, someone who is on both groups should take this up.

I answered because I *am* in both groups, and am the author of the
relevant CSS spec.  ^_^


> I do truly believe that if I told my high school maths teacher that 0
> degrees was up, I would get beaten about the head. They would
> then probably grab my ear, say "look at the compass you idiot",
> and point out that North (0 degrees) required me to walk horizontally
> along the earth and that I couldn't fly.

If you told your high school math teacher that 90deg was down, like
the 'azimuth' property says, you'd be just as wrong.  SVG uses
screen-polar angles, not math-polar.  CSS previous used math-polar.
My poll gave three options - math-polar, screen-polar, and bearing
angles - and bearing angles won by an enormous margin.

~TJ

Received on Friday, 1 July 2011 03:29:28 UTC