Questions about animation

I've been having fun reading the SMIL spec (to better understand what's 
happening with SVG, to be honest) and was wondering about a few aspects of 
the animation modules.  Some of the wonderings may also be suggestions for 
change, albeit uninformed ones.

As an FYI, my goal is to use SMIL to emulate some of the visual interface 
effects of OS/X.

My first question is whether there is a way to be notified when all members 
of a set of animations have completed?  As I understand timings, the "begin"
  attribute specifies a list of conditions which are "OR"ed together.  In 
other words if any of the conditions fire, then the animation begins.  I 
was hoping to be notified when *all* of the conditions are true.

My second question is whether it would be possible to add in a scripting 
module?  It would be nice to be able to say "execute this script once the 
following set of animations has completed".

My last question is related to the "fill" attribute.  As I understand it, 
there is no predefined way to update the DOM from the OM.  A "fill" value 
of "freeze" simply means that the last value of the OM persists, not that 
the DOM has changed.  Consider the following animation:

<animate
   id="Scrolldown"
   attributeName="y"
   by="+10"
   dur="1s"
   fill="freeze"
/>

It works great the first time.  Unfortunately subsequent applications don'
t work after that, as it takes the initial value from the DOM, which has 
not been updated.  I was hoping to define a number of such animations that 
I could reuse to manipulate my presentation, but I don't think that it's 
currently possible.  Is there any reason not to add a new value for "fill"
  of "update" that would update the DOM, as opposed to being limited to the 
OM?

Thanks for any comments.  SMIL looks to be pretty interesting, and very 
useful; it's just a little tricky to understand for the first time :)

Jason Foster

Received on Monday, 8 July 2002 10:12:54 UTC