Re: <link> and <param> in SVG (SVG ACTION-2534)

Doug Schepers:
>Jeff Schiller wrote (on 5/1/09 4:31 PM):
>> On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 2:13 PM, Doug Schepers<schepers@w3.org>  wrote:
>>>  Yes, we intend for them to be more or less the same in terms of syntax
>>> and  functionality.  What specifically did you have in mind?
>>
>> The biggest one I could think of is being able to specify a feed for a
>> given SVG document:
>>
>> <svg...>
>>    <link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Some feed"
>> href="http://www.example.com/feed.atom" />
>> </svg>
>>
>> But of course there are many other relationships that would make sense
>> (author, timesheet, etc).

>Yes, all those make sense.  I thought of feeds, but did not think of 
>timesheets, embarrassingly enough (since I've had conversations with 
>those guys about using timesheets in SVG).  Jonathan Chetwynde also 
>mentioned linking to RDF resources (which could make good sense for 
>licenses, too).

>Another good use might be linking to an alternate presentation of the 
>document, maybe something more geared to accessible access, or just 
>another visualization of the same data.

>I had some ideas, but I was trolling for more, so thanks for delivering. 
>:)  I'm also interested in other interesting uses.

Other interesting options for link could be relations like 
'chapter', 'section', 'subsection', 'help' etc in larger projects with more
than one document or for accessibility, if the author wants
to provide an external help document for more complex applications,
maybe in another format like XHTML.
In general link navigation in larger projects is already available
in (X)HTML too, but not often used, maybe because of poor
implementations in the early years of HTML, in some viewers
up to now. Another problem is, that in (X)HTML one cannot
create structured lists of link elements to make this much more
usable. However, in SVG 1.2 with available RDFa attributes
one could simply allow g elements with related RDFa attributes
to structure link navigations in a meaningful way, maybe then
it would be possible to implement this feature for SVG in a
nice and usable way without the need for authors to invent
the wheel of a navigation menue for every larger SVG project
again. 

But I think, the use of XLink:href instead of src, href or whatever is
less confusing for SVG authors, because they are already familiar
with the simple principle to have exactly this attribute from XLink
to reference something. This is much simpler as the confusing
collection of different named (X)HTML attributes to provide the same
functionality (src, href, data, cite etc). There is no need to introduce
these historical legacies of HTML into SVG, would be much better
to be able to use XLink:href in XHTML and other XMLs too for
consistency and simplicity.

Olaf

Received on Saturday, 2 May 2009 11:42:07 UTC