Re: [Fwd: Misconception?]

Dave J Woolley wrote:
> 
> Every single character in the test file for the Adobe
> SVG Viewer is individually placed (to produce the arc,
> rather than because of microspacing)
> <http://www.adobe.com/svg/svgfiles/svgtest.svg>

Yes. I am tempted to produce a revised version of that file that says "its
time for adobe" "to implement text on a path". Since they do not implement
text on a path, they can't do this properly. Actually they could, using
tref instead of text eleents, but they didn't do tha either.

Maybe WAI shouuld start a "DON" "TBR" "EAKMYYWO" RDS" campaign?

> PDF, from the very begining, has had parameters to tweak
> the word and letter spacing, so that individual placement is
> not needed, and the PDF coding guidelines say that spaces
> should not be simulated by cursor positioning (the spaces need to
> be identifiable for cut and paste and searching to work), so PDF
> basically has the same accessibility features in these areas.
> I don't believe the real market for SVG and PDF are as different
> as Chris believes, and therefore faults that show in PDF
> creation tools to show in those for SVG.

I agree that SVG can serve the PDF market. I don't believe (indeed, i have
evidence to the contrary) that SVG is solely restricted to the PDF market.

> My concern is not so much the current beta state of SVG but
> what happens when it comes standard with browsers and every
> self proclaimed web design expert starts replacing their
> hybrid HTML (table mosaic)/Flash pages with pure SVG ones, and
> the popular book writers start producing hints and tip books
> with folklore on how to do this sort of thing with no mention
> at all of accessibility.  (Doing arched headings is likely to be
> one of the first candidates for cook book examples in such
> books.)

Well, doing arched examples in SVG is easy. But the current Adobe
implementastion doesn't do them. Other implementations do. Spliting the
text up into individualy place d letters makes the designers job harder,
and makes it tricky to maintain and difficult to localise for different
languages. These practical considerations are likely to help.

Web pages from third parties that examine different ways of achieving the
same effect, and give the impression that peiople who do it a particular
way are cliueless, are also likely to help establish the right memes
ragarding SVG authoring.

--
Chris

Received on Friday, 4 August 2000 14:05:48 UTC