Re: feDropShadow and alternatives

Brad Kemper

On Jan 11, 2011, at 10:55 AM, Simon Fraser <smfr@me.com> wrote:

> On Jan 11, 2011, at 10:32 AM, Brad Kemper wrote:
> 
>> On Jan 11, 2011, at 9:39 AM, Simon Fraser wrote:
>> 
>>> On Jan 11, 2011, at 9:25 AM, Dirk Schulze wrote:
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> Have you considered proposing that syntax as an extension of the 'filter' property instead? E.g filter: [<url> | <drop-shadow-shorthand>]
>>>> Sorry, don't know what you mean. Do you mean a syntax how you can see it in the CSS spec?
>>> 
>>> I think there's clear value in having a canned "drop-shadow" filter in CSS, which is different from box-shadow in that it doesn't clip out the contents of the box.
>>> 
>>> Whether this is implemented on top of SVG filters or not is a choice for the implementor.
>> 
>> Depends on what you mean by "canned", I suppose. I had imagined that there would be some canned SVG to use as templates, but that anyone could write their own filters to use as templates and then call them in a standard way (see my new thread from a couple minutes ago). This would not, then, require a new property name for each filter that you might want to have varying values for, and the author could write such filters-as-templates.
> 
> By "canned" I mean simple filters that authors can use without any knowledge of SVG. For example:
> filter: blur(10px);
> 
> UAs should be free to implement these however they please (which may or may not involve SVG).
> 
> What you're proposing is really just Robert's proposal for SVG filters in CSS.

A variation or extension of Robert's proposal, AFAIK. The idea is that, whatever the CSS syntax (urls and other space separated values, or functions named after the id of the Svg filter, or whatever), that the author could edit or create their own versions of what the UA included, by writing their own versions of the SVG filter that the CSS is based on.