Re: SWITCH is an imprecise tool for offering alternatives.

Hello again Jim,

On Mon, 28 Oct 2002, Jim Ley wrote:

> In SVG, we have the switch element for offering alternative content e.g.
> 
> <switch>
>   <text systemLanguage="en">Yes</text>
>   <text systemLanguage="de">Ja</text>
> </switch>
> 
> This is very useful, but it's not very flexible, and can't contain the
> sort of semantics that I'm interested in, it fails particularly where the
> user is fluent in German, but also can understand a bit of English (so
> would rather get English than nothing, but German is best.)  to have
> this, we really need to be able to show the quality of the different
> types, in the above the German and English are of identical quality, but
> it's easy to imagine a situation where one language is much better
> quality than the other.

Really nice explanation.

> At the HTTP content-negotation level, this is nicely handled by q values,

Well... it depends on definition of "nicely" and "handled". Note, I'm
not suggesting it is a problem with HTTP.

> and I think that the switch mechanism could easily be extended to use the
> same.  (not just language but all different switch.)  This will have the
> advantage that users can really get to the content which they prefer
> rather than leaving it wholly in the hands of the author which is shown.

In summary, we think you've raised a good point, we want to facilitate
a solution in SVG 1.2, but we're not completely sure that your proposed
solution will work for us.

Dean