Re: ACTION-924: canvas and SVG draft text / comments

You are correctly raising two issues, and my
contention is that none of them is properly
addressed (in the limited scope of graphics
functions) in the current proposal.

> Shouldn't W3C be the non-bias member that
> says, if your going to use this technology, this is the
> standards to follow?   Not, don't use this technology
> for that, use this instead. 
> To me it seems there should be a standard for people
> that use Canvas and a standard for people that use SVG.

The MWABP is a best practices document. Hence,
if there is a choice of technologies, a best
practice indicates which technology is more
appropriate depending on the circumstances.
The second aspect is that, within a
technology, there might be more appopriate
ways of using it than others, which is another
type of best practice.

Currently, the proposed text does not provide
compelling reasons as to why SVG should be 
used rather than canvas (or vice-versa), except
for the single weak reference to one technical
feature. 

It does not provide any guidance whatsoever about how to use each of the technology by
itself (but this was admittedly not the
original mission of the editor).

> Plus, when you start tell people what technologies to
> use instead of standardizing the technology, people start
> looking more closely at who your friends are and make sure
> your not bias about your decisions and making W3C more
> unreliable.

And this is why I mentioned Flash lite, a
widespread technology that is squarely in the
same scope as SVG and canvas but is not even
mentioned.

As you rightfully point out, companies give
priority to the technologies for which they
have or can find skilled personnel. In this
sense a best practice is not a law: by giving
a justifed preference to some technologies
depending on the development context, it 
highlights the trade-offs, pitfalls and 
possible difficulties of using other available
technologies. E.g. "if you want to develop
this kind of functionality, then the preferred
way is to use technology X, which compared to
technology Y has such and such advantages 
regarding portability, performance, whatever.
On the other hand, for this other kind of 
application, technology Y is preferrable, 
because of accessibility". Then the developer
knows what he is up to.

E.Casais

Received on Thursday, 3 September 2009 21:00:33 UTC