RE: Minutes, 8 October 2015 SVG telcon

>From the minutes: 
------------
Declarative animation and conformance

   ed: this was raised as an issue on github
...
   Cam: we should probably add an issue saying conformance class wording
needs to be
   Reviewed.
-------------

You know: I'm not really clear what was decided here. 

The question raised in github was "should the language read ' In a dynamic
SVG viewer, the developer has two options for animating SVG
elements/properties: they can be animated using declarative animations (eg
SVG SMIL / SVG's animation elements) or using script (eg rAF)."' or not?" 

Specifically, as the thread at github continues:

"That would mean that both are required... If there is / will be consensus
in the SVG WG that both script animation and declarative animation (incl
SVG's animation elements) should be required for dynamic SVG viewers (I
think both should be required for eg browsers), then the wording (eg in the
SVG2 spec) should be updated to unambiguously state that."

Are we saying that both SMIL/SVG animation and script should be supported or
that browsers may choose not to implement whatever they wish when it comes
to animation?

I can say that in the world of SVG developers at large there is quite some
uncertainty about the status of SVG animation. Yes, I am aware of the
history here: Microsoft didn't like SMIL. They also didn't like SVG for a
decade and instead preferred Silverlight and a handful of other proprietary
technologies. They eventually saw the light (thanks to the Visio folks?).
Was a company's lack of support sufficient grounds for scrapping SVG?
Apparently not, since SVG continued without Microsoft's support. Now, parts
of the Chrome team don't like SMIL, but prefer the weaker and
as-yet-unspecced CSS approach. Does that mean that a standards body scraps
SVG animation? It should certainly not! Content will break, the ability to
express things will be diminished, confusion will result, and, overall, the
attempt to fast-track approval of SVG2 will likely be slowed.

I am also aware of troves of SMIL content un-indexed by the bots that
attempt to index the web. The bots don't go as deep as they should, the
indexing of Chinese documents seems paltry, and the bots don't see behind
firewalls where a lot of mainstay corporate content lives. The argument
during the Gopher period that no one uses HTML was not a good argument for
staying with Gopher. The argument during the pre-SVG era that its proportion
of the web was tiny was offered (repeatedly) as a reason for not adopting
SVG. The argument that SMIL content is small as a reason for not supporting
it is just as fallacious. The question should revolve around how can one
accomplish something, not around what should people want to accomplish. The
latter becomes a political statement.

When SVG and HTML were invented, people asked "what would we like to be able
to do with the internet?" and then built languages to address such vision.
Now people seem to ask "what, from a previous vision is expeditious and
inexpensive to implement? What can be cut without too many people noticing?"

The purposes of SVG seem rather to have been forgotten in the discussions of
late. 

Just sayin'
David

Received on Monday, 12 October 2015 20:54:29 UTC