Re: SVG 1.2 Comment: 4 Flowing text and graphics

On Thu, 4 Nov 2004, Thomas DeWeese wrote:
> >
> > In any case, DOM3 Events fully defines event flow through <foreignObject>,
> > even when code from multiple vendors _is_ involved.
> 
> This may be true 'in theory' however in the real world I don't
> know that anyone (except perhaps IE) that would actually allow this
> to happen.

Mozilla's SVG implementation integrates with the rest of the DOM for 
events processing (and for that matter, for everything else). If Opera 
implemented SVG, we would do the same.


> This isn't really a worthwhile discussion because what you are really 
> discussing is a unified HTML+CSS+SVG user agent where this could/would 
> work.

Yes, that is the segment of the UA market that I am primarily concerned 
with (and represent). It's quite relevant to me. :-)


> > I do not understand why it is important for SVG rendering agents to 
> > all have the same line breaking. The whole point of user-agent 
> > controlled line wrapping is that the line wraps where it needs to 
> > wrap, and not in a necessarily precise location. If the precise 
> > location was important, the author would use manual line breaking.
> 
> As has been stated many times in response to this, SVG is a Graphics 
> format so it is important.

CSS is a "Graphics format" too but doesn't consider this important. Just 
because something is graphical or presentational doesn't mean that the 
rendering has to be defined to the pixel. In fact, word-wrapping is one of 
the areas that, in my experience, Web authors are least worried about 
having interoperability on. I grant you that the same might not be true 
for SVG, but I don't understand why. Given certain conditions (the text 
must not overlap _this_, must be to the left of _that_, etc), why does it 
matter whether the text wraps after this word or that word?


> > This is the Web we're talking about, after all. SVG is primarily a Web 
> > language (that's why the World Wide Web Consortium is the forum in 
> > which it is being designed). On the Web, pixel-perfect accuracy is not 
> > as important as in the print world.
> 
> Batik gets complaints because the way we anti-alias content is different 
> from Adobe!  SVG is a graphics format, in a graphics format there is a 
> very high premium put on accuracy across renderers.

Interesting. Could you point me to such complaints (off-list)? I'm curious 
to learn about this, since if Opera implements SVG we'll probably have the 
same issues.

Cheers,
-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Friday, 5 November 2004 00:16:25 UTC