Re: on text decoration

In a message dated 10/01/01 13:06:21 GMT Standard Time, matsui@drl.mei.co.jp 
writes:

> Dear SMIL experts,
>  
>  I'm sorry for intterupting you.
>  It is my first time to send a mail to this reflector.
>  
>  I have a question on how to decorate text characters
>  in a smil presentation.
>  One possible solution would be real-text.
>  But, are there any other ways to do that ?
>  
>  For example, is it possible to define text attributes
>  in the <region> element using css2 as follows ?
>  
>  <layout type="text/css">
>    [region="foo"] {
>      top:10px;
>      left:10px;
>      font-family: courier;
>      color:black;
>    }
>  </layout>
>  
>  Best regards,
>  Yoshinori Matsui
>  Panasonic/Matsushita

Yoshinori,

I certainly don't qualify as a SMIL expert. However, I suggest you take a 
look at the text capabilities of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). You could 
certainly do in SVG the kind of things you mention. SVG has many links with 
SMIL Animation.

Despite its name, SVG has significant text capabilities which build in the 
kind of CSS properties which you mention.

Take a look at 

http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/Overview.htm8

Some useful SVG links are to be found on

http://homepages.strath.ac.uk/~bdu99198/xml/svg/links.html

There is an active SVG developers discussion mailing list at

http://www.egroups.com/group/svg-developers

There are many more online resources but those should help you get started.

You could do something like what you mention with the following SVG code:

<?xml version='1.0'?>

<!DOCTYPE svg PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD SVG 20000303 Stylable//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/03/WD-SVG-20000303/DTD/svg-20000303-stylable.dtd">

<svg width="500" height="500">

<rect x="100" y="100" width="300" height="100" style="stroke-width:3; 
stroke:red; fill:none;"/>

<text style="font-family:courier, serif; color:black;font-size:36;" x="105" 
y="130">
Your text goes here.
</text>

</svg>

Take a look at Section 10 of the SVG Candidate Recommendation for information 
on text handling.

To view the simple code above you would need the Adobe SVG Viewer (version 
1.0 which is compatible with the March 2000 draft) available at 
http://www.adobe.com/svg/viewer/install/main.html

I hope that helps.

Andrew Watt

Received on Wednesday, 10 January 2001 09:07:24 UTC