RE: acid test stuff

Thanks for the clarification, Patrick. I figured that this group would be quick to set the record straight if this weren't the plan; but sorry for extrapolating beyond the data.  Having done a lot of animation with SMIL, it is just so much quicker (development-time wise) for the author; but yeah, I can see that it probably isn't too easy to build, and, so, one must prioritize. If it were my choice I'd do animation before filters, but, sure, there are other paths to animation than just through SMIL. 

I would be nervous, though, if Opera becomes the only robust implementation of SMIL once ASV goes away (which will happen for a time until IE's native support catches up with ASV), since when having script and SMIL both interact with DOM (e.g., dynamic insertion of animation nodes that on termination trigger script as in) it is hard for the author to know if it's right when there's only one implementation (that was my nemesis before Opera had SVG support and ASV was the only place to test).

I was not so much worried about Microsoft's plans maybe as about an oft-recurrent suspicion of mine that there might be SMIL skeptics lurking secretly among the WG, as a sort of sleeper cell. I recently saw someone (perhaps not from the WG) suggesting their complete complacency were SMIL to die a quiet death, and such complacency bespoke tragedy in my mind. As some of the SVG WG may be quick to recall, my early suggestions [2] [3] in the HTML WG that HTML might benefit from some healthy doses of SMIL-like constructs resulted in the most curious set of objections, as though Martians had moved in next door and were beginning to impregnate the local flora with alien DNA. Such was rather typical, though, of my forays into the HTML WG.

[1] http://srufaculty.sru.edu/david.dailey/svg/svgopen2008/makestars4.svg 

[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007JanMar/0488.html

[3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007JanMar/0492.html 

Cheers
David

-----Original Message-----
From: Patrick Dengler [mailto:patd@microsoft.com] 
Sent: Monday, March 29, 2010 11:48 AM
To: Alex Danilo; Dailey, David P.
Cc: SVG IG List
Subject: RE: acid test stuff

"I am rather troubled to hear that some of the Microsoft folks are saying they don't need to implement SMIL"

"Did they really say that? Then I'd go so far as to say they are idiots."

We never said we didn't need to implement SMIL.  What we said is that SMIL is a big implementation, and like other browsers, it is not going to make it in IE9 (our first SVG implementation).  I did say that there are many ways to animate.  There is SMIL, there are libraries that support SMIL in absence of the implementation, there is jscript; and there are two areas we need to investigate in CSS: transitions and transformations.

My statement was that SMIL is not tool supported, and we want to reconcile all of these with HTML5.  This is what we have touched on in the working group.

Thanks,

Patrick Dengler

-----Original Message-----
From: public-svg-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:public-svg-ig-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Alex Danilo
Sent: Friday, March 26, 2010 2:55 PM
To: Dailey, David P.
Cc: SVG IG List
Subject: Re: acid test stuff

Hi David,

	Nice test!

--Original Message--:
>This example is probably about six years old...
>
>http://srufaculty.sru.edu/david.dailey/svg/newstuff/reflectedgradient.s
>vg
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><snip/>
>
>I am rather troubled to hear that some of the Microsoft folks are saying they don't need to implement SMIL since "even the SVG Working Group doesn't like it" (my paraphrase not theirs). SMIL is exactly half of the reason SVG is good, so I hope folks don't forget that is one of the ideological centers of the whole ball of wax.
><snip/>

Did they really say that? Then I'd go so far as to say they are idiots.

The entire basis of declarative animation is one of the most powerful features in SVG.

We are doing stuff that would be nearly impossible with scripting, but trivial with declarative animation.

Also, IE 5.5 I think first introduced HTML+SMIL and it's a pretty good SMIL implementation too. So if they don't do it for SVG it simply reflects their immaturity in graphics:-) (Oh, and a great example of code non-reuse).

Alex

>
>Feeling polemic today
>David
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>
>
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Received on Monday, 29 March 2010 18:42:53 UTC