Re: microdata use cases and Getting data out of poorly written Web pages

Philip Taylor wrote:
> Geoffrey Sneddon wrote:
>> On 9 May 2009, at 14:59, Shelley Powers wrote:
>>
>>> It would have been foolish to break down what requirements there are 
>>> for vector graphics, then create use cases and proposals for every 
>>> aspect (must support gradients, support for transforms, etc.), and 
>>> then come up with some kludged together vector graphic support that 
>>> isn't currently supported by any company, only because SVG is an 
>>> "implementation detail".
>>
>> We did actually do that, for what it's worth.
>
> It might be helpful to provide evidence of that.
>
> E.g. http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/New_Vocabularies lists some 
> technology-independent use cases for that discussion, like "Writing a 
> document by hand, with inline diagrams imported from a graphics package."
>
> http://www.w3.org/mid/Pine.LNX.4.62.0803291940170.12640@hixie.dreamhostps.com 
> then says:
>
>> I haven't looked in detail at the vector graphics side of the problem 
>> yet. Off-hand it looks like SVG would be a reasonably good fit for 
>> some of the requirements, in particular ease of implementation and a 
>> reasonably well-defined scripting environment, but it also isn't a 
>> perfect fit for everything, for example it probably isn't supported 
>> in as wide a collection of editors as, say, the Windows Metafile 
>> format, and isn't supported in as wide an installed base of browsers 
>> as, say, VML. I do not wish to prematurely limit our options, doing 
>> so would not be fair to the Web authoring community.
>
> http://www.w3.org/mid/Pine.LNX.4.62.0804060112390.18949@hixie.dreamhostps.com 
> (proposed solutions to the use cases) later says:
>
>> After briefly considering various formats, I concluded that the only
>> reasonable choice for a vector graphics format in text/html was SVG. 
>> It is
>> already supported to some extent by most major browsers, and it has
>> reasonably well-defined DOM semantics.
>
> For some other uses cases (e.g. "Writing a document by hand, with 
> vector graphic icons."), the proposed solution was to not change the 
> spec at all (e.g. because you can already solve it by putting SVG in 
> <img>).
>
> So it wasn't a case of considering use cases like "I want to draw 
> something with circles" and "I want to draw something with gradients" 
> and building up a new vector markup language. But it did start with 
> use cases that could be solved without SVG, because there might be 
> better solutions that don't involve SVG at all, and it was concluded 
> that the benefits/costs of reusing SVG for at least one of the cases 
> were clearly better than the benefits/costs of other possible 
> solutions, and nobody argued against that conclusion, so it went in 
> the spec.
>
Interesting, thanks for the case history on SVG.

I noticed, though, that folks were allowed to mention SVG in relation to 
the use cases when it comes to the vector graphics discussion. We're not 
been able to say the 'R' word in the discussions related to metadata.

Come Monday, I may get naughty, litter the 'R' word all about, like 
elephant droppings that you ignore at your own peril.

Thanks for the history again, Philip.

Shelley

Received on Saturday, 9 May 2009 18:47:20 UTC