Re: SVG Tiny 1.2 is now a Candidate Recommendation

On Aug 22, 2006, at 5:29 AM, Andrew Emmons wrote:

>
> Hello Maciej,
>
> This is my personal opinion, and not necessarily that of the Working
> Group, but it is my understanding that textArea is meant to be quite
> different than any existing line-wrapping specifications. For Tiny,  
> it's
> a lightweight algorithm so that the whole CSS box model does not  
> have to
> be implemented on a mobile device. This addresses the needs we had for
> Tiny, but it also scales to Full, where I believe powerful new  
> features
> will be added like wrapping within shapes.

Yes, and this has the result of creating two incompatible models for  
wrapped text for SVG and CSS-styled text, with different but  
overlapping sets of capabilities, which is precisely the point to  
which I formally objected. Just to cite one of the many problems with  
this plan, in an XHTML+SVG CDI user agent, you could have some text  
that is marked up semantically, and some that is wrapped to a shape,  
but none that does both. This seems clearly not in the AWWW spirit of  
"orthogonal specifications", adds major complexity for implementors  
of full-featured browsers (as opposed to SVG-only limited device  
clients[*]), and a pain for authors by creating two incompatible  
categories of wrapped text. However, the SVG WG and The Director  
apparently do not see this as a problem.

Regards,
Maciej

* I think this is better terminology than "Desktop" and "Mobile Web",  
now that more and more full-featured browsers that properly support  
the existing web are available on mobile devices.