RE: Pieslice

I agree in some respects with the notion that you should have no high level
shapes such as pieslice etc., because people such as me ask "if you have
pieslice, why don't you have arc". There are trade-offs with any approach
you take. One issue for my case is readability of the html file - if we
generate a svg file which is entirely composed of vector commands such as
moveto and lineto, editing it by hand becomes harder. 

I think you could get rid of the basic shapes and keep readability if you
improved the <defs> element to include parameterisation, similar to what was
proposed in VML. 

Take as an example a triangle

<g>
  <defs>
    <g id="Triangle>	
      <path d="M @1 @2 L @3 @4 L @5 @6 z" />
    </g>
  </defs>

  <!-- referenced content -->
    <use href="#Triangle" adj="500 500 700 500 600 700"  />
</g>

In this way you could have a whole file of SVG <defs>  which you only
download once, and then your <use> elements simply reference this file using
Xpointer. Is this possible, or am I rambling?

Regards
Ian

	-----Original Message-----
	From:	Jon Ferraiolo [SMTP:jferraio@Adobe.COM]
	Sent:	Thursday, February 25, 1999 4:16 AM
	To:	Duncanson, Ian (Ex AS01)
	Cc:	'www-svg@w3.org'
	Subject:	Re: Pieslice

	At 10:18 AM 2/24/99 +1100, Duncanson, Ian (Ex AS01) wrote:
	>Is it envisaged that the <pieslice/> shape will be able to be
specified as
	>an arc or a wedge (i.e. closed or not closed)?

	What do you think?

	The working group welcomes all suggestions about the advisability
and exact
	feature set for vector graphics shapes (Chapter 12 in current spec)
such as
	<pieslice/>. Some members of the working group take the position
that we
	shouldn't have higher-level vector graphics shapes such as
<pieslice/>.
	<pieslice/>, in particular, is probably the weakest candidate in
list
	because it probably would have the least usage. (It is unlikely that
	<pieslice/> would offer the exact behavior people need and thus
people will
	be likely to just define a <path> with an arc instead.)

	Incidentally, my thinking is that if we put in <pieslice/> it would
always
	be a closed shape (i.e., three "sides": two segments starting from
the
	center point shooting off at <startangle> and <endangle>,
respectively, and
	an arc connecting the two segments).

	Jon Ferraiolo
	Adobe Systems Incorporated
	Member SVG working group

Received on Wednesday, 24 February 1999 17:28:10 UTC