Using SVG properties in CSS

Hello www-svg,

while I find it very interesting and fun to see David Hyatt come up with  
new syntaxes for SVG features in CSS I still think that it falls short of  
offering the full benefits of SVG. There are a number of things that make  
it less useful than having a full svg document that you can manipulate  
with script, animate with SMIL and reuse parts of. And that hasn't even  
begun addressing the concerns about being able to transparently use  
definitions across different document formats.

I'm editor of two SVG 1.2 spec modules that cover filters and paint  
servers. Both of which have corresponding CSS properties which could very  
well be applied to other types of content than SVG, in fact it's a stated  
goal. There are other modules in progress as well, which could also apply  
to any content in a similar fashion.

Having the CSS WG adopt the SVG properties defined in SVG 1.1 so that they  
could be used in e.g HTML was proposed a long long time ago. Now, since it  
seems to be on the table again in another form, it seems indeed that the  
features are desired and I think it would be good if that the proposal to  
allow SVG properties to be used in CSS for other content was considered  
again, see for example threads listed here[1].

There's some discussion on the mozilla svg newsgroup[2] about how such  
definitions could be made, and I believe it would be similar to how CSS  
background images are defined with regards to intrinsic size etc.

It's also noteworthy to see that when it comes to resources such as  
webfonts, it seems it's not considered a problem to download additional  
resources, but when it comes to the same using additional svg files, then  
it's often said to be too heavy. Besides, since Webkit is already  
supporting downloadable SVGFonts in @font-face, they should be well aware  
that such resources may well contain other resources that could be used in  
the stylesheet, re-using the same svg resource. My question is simply: is  
there any good reason why this shouldn't be allowed?

True, SVG is not CSS. But then again, CSS isn't meant to be SVG either. At  
least that's my opinion.

Best regards
/Erik

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-css-wg/2007AprJun/0154.html
[2] http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.mozilla.devel.svg/3447

-- 
Erik Dahlstrom, Core Technology Developer, Opera Software
Co-Chair, W3C SVG Working Group
Personal blog: http://my.opera.com/macdev_ed

Received on Wednesday, 30 April 2008 08:54:46 UTC