RE: Flowing text in SVG2

Hi Jelle,

Agreed completely. The 1990's era concept that presentation, behavior, and
appearance were all separate silos of activity was a cute metaphor for a
20th century world filled with hypertext flowed into rectilinear cells. In a
larger world, like SVG should be, the three are all part of the "meaning" of
an expression. Of course such late 20th century thinking was the mindset
that many of those cutting their teeth on HTML4 and CSS learned with zeal,
whence, I think, so much of the opposition to things like text flow, text
shaping, user-moldable glyphs and even declarative animation being put into
a common expressive language. 

Currently, the situation in SVG is even worse. One cannot even measure or
reshape the glyphs that appear on a page so that even wizards with their JS
alchemy are stuck when it comes to trying to reshape text. I think many are
trying to tell us that SVG5 is the proper release to be thinking about, and
that in the meantime, text should either be rectilinear or it should be
bitmapped and WOFF-ish to prevent any possibility of accessibility,
reshaping or artful crafting.

I recall my own utter amazement a couple of years ago when I tried to use
script to top-align text along a common top-line. [1] 

So simple a thing as top alignment appears not meant to be for a couple more
major versions of SVG. Simply being able to return path data from a font and
align text above and below to a pair of curves would allow a lot of the
effects current handled by web authors through bitmaps [2] .

BTW, Silverlight appears to have some nice functionality [3]. Perhaps we
should encourage everyone to switch to that. It was basically sort of done
in the spirit of SVG1.2 (which was actually a step in the right direction,
methinks).

Regards,
David

[1] http://srufaculty.sru.edu/david.dailey/svg/TopAlignBrowsers.png 

(based on http://granite.sru.edu/~ddailey/svg/tspanmeasure4.svg )

[2] http://cs.sru.edu/~ddailey/svg/GeometricAccessibility.html

[3] http://wsmithdesign.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/silverlight-text-effects/ 

-----Original Message-----
From: Jelle [mailto:pjmulder@xs4all.nl] 
Sent: Monday, April 22, 2013 5:58 AM
To: David Woolley
Cc: anatoly techtonik; www-svg@w3.org
Subject: Re: Flowing text in SVG2

Hi all,

In this case SVG2 is about to create the problem of having to revert to
previous generation technology to do the task the standard is much better
suited to. Yes, we can include some HTML text into our document to do
textflow in one of those ugly rectangular shapes without any control over
kerning and layout as we've done the past 20+ years. Same for text inputs
and the like.

I don quite get the idea that SVG should be reduced to creating vector
illustration and larded with javascript libraries to produce the
functionality everyone in the design industry has been waiting for for so
long.

Text input in typographic text, arbitrary shape flowed text, typography
control. It's not rocket science and is something HTML lacks and SVG is well
geared for to provide. Some method of escape code or <br> would be nice as
well when it comes to flow text, so you can easily paragraph it.

Anchors that let you pan to an object? Would be great for diagrams and the
like and worked nicely in HTML. I get the idea that function bloat should be
prevented, but having some measure of similarity really wouldn't hurt.
It would certainly make SVG more acceptable if similar methods can be used
for functionality that has been around in HTML for 20+ years.

The main reason for HTML to be a success is because it was easy to use and
simple widgets were standardised. Why are SVG user expected to be JS
programmers or alchemist using HTML for some basic functionality that will
kill the whole UX? SVG is needed to fill the void that HTML left on the
design aspect of content. Or am I single in this view?

Jelle Mulder

> anatoly techtonik wrote:
>
>>     What is the flowed
>>     text http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-SVG12-20041027/flow.html
>> replacement
>>     in the next more advanced and awesome SVG2?
>>
> Whilst I'm not sure what the current policy is, the original concept, 
> arising from the X in XML, would have been that if you wanted to embed 
> HTML features in SVG, you would used the relevant XHTML elements, 
> possibly wrapped in something to indicate an escape.
>
> One of the problems with software standards, is that they eventually 
> try to do everything in the one standard, which then leads to the 
> creation of new, simpler, and more tightly focussed standards covering 
> their original core area.
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> David Woolley
> Emails are not formal business letters, whatever businesses may want.
> RFC1855 says there should be an address here, but, in a world of spam, 
> that is no longer good advice, as archive address hiding may not work.
>
>

Received on Monday, 22 April 2013 11:30:39 UTC