Re: [wbs] response to 'Call for Review: SVG 1.1 Second Edition is W3C Proposed Recommendation'

Hi, Mohamed-

Thanks for your response on the SVG 1.1 2nd Edition PR poll.  The SVG WG 
has discussed your specific change requests, and the responses are 
below.  We would appreciate your prompt responses to let us know if we 
have satisfied your objections.


innovimax+w3c@gmail.com wrote (on Tue, 28 Jun 2011):
>
> Regarding the "Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 (Second Edition)"
> specification, the reviewer  suggests changes, and only supports
> publication as a Recommendation if the changes are adopted [Formal
> Objection].
>
> Additional comments about the specification:
>    I'm surprised that there is still NO reference to the RELAX NG schema
> available at http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/1.1/rng/svg11.rng

That RNG was experimental, and reported to be faulty; it is also long 
out of date (it was posted in 2003), and doesn't reflect any of the 
changes made to SVG 1.1 for the 2nd edition.  As such, it's not suitable 
to link to from the SVG 1.1 SE spec.


> as pointed out http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/WG/track/products/21

The SVG WG certainly does want to produce an SVG 1.1 SE RelaxNG schema; 
however, there is currently no one active in the group with experience 
in writing RelaxNG schemas.  We do not want to produce a flawed RelaxNG 
schema, as we believe that would be harmful.

MURATA Makoto does have such expertise, and he has expressed interest in 
producing a RelaxNG schema [1]; we have provided him the updated DTD to 
use as a starting point, and plan to work with him to produce the schema 
for both SVG 1.1 SE and SVG 2.

However, we don't want to delay publishing SVG 1.1 SE as a 
Recommendation, because we don't know when that work will be done; since 
the RelaxNG schema will not be normative, we believe we can edit the 
Recommendation in place to add such a link when it is done, as well as 
linking to it from the SVG WG site and other useful places.


> == References ==

We agree in principle to referencing the most recent specifications 
wherever appropriate; however, in the specific cases you cite, SVG 1.1 
was developed in the context of the normative references we currently 
list, and has not been systematically revised and cross-referenced in 
the context of the more recent specifications.  There are differences 
between the original and most recent versions of the referenced 
specifications, and it may not be accurate to link to the more recent 
versions.

For SVG 2, we will use only the most recent specifications as 
references, and it will be easier to cross-reference.  If we create 
another edition of SVG 1.1, we will also try to update all the references.

Please see the specific comments inline.

> Make Normative reference to CSS 2.1

As you know, CSS 2.1 has dropped features from CSS 2 that are referenced 
by SVG 1.1 (such as the @font-face property), so we can't simply 
reference CSS 2.1 instead.  Chris Lilley goes into this in some detail 
on the public SVG email list [3].  We do give a caveat in that reference 
that that CSS 2.1 should be used in general:

[[
[CSS2]
Cascading Style Sheets, level 2, B. Bos, H. W. Lie, C. Lilley, I. 
Jacobs, eds. World Wide Web Consortium, 11 April 2008.
This edition of CSS2 is http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-CSS2-20080411/ and 
is no longer maintained.
The latest edition of CSS2 is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/. 
The CSS Working Group encourages authors and implementors to reference 
CSS 2.1 (or its successor) instead of this document and, when features 
common to CSS2 and CSS 2.1 are defined differently to follow the 
definitions in CSS 2.1. A list of changes between CSS2 and CSS 2.1 may 
be helpful.
]]


SVG 2 will reference CSS 2.1 (or the most recent update).  However, we 
respectfully decline to change the normative reference from CSS 2 to CSS 
2.1 for SVG 1.1 SE.


> Make Normative reference to SMIL 3.0
> Remove Informative reference to SMIL 3.0

SVG 1.1 SE does not actually use the features of SMIL 3.0, it is based 
on SMIL Animation [4], so changing the reference would be inaccurate. 
Therefore, we respectfully decline to make the reference to SMIL 3.0 
normative for SVG 1.1 SE.



> Make Informative reference to MathML 3.0

Since the current reference to MathML is merely informative, we see no 
harm or inaccuracy in updating this reference to MathML 3.0.  Thanks for 
the suggestion.


We hope you agree with our rationale for these responses.  Please let us 
know if these responses satisfy your objections.


[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-svg/2011Jul/0010.html
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-svg/2011Jul/0027.html
[3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-svg/2011Feb/0034.html
[4] http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/refs.html#ref-SMILANIM

Regards-
-Doug Schepers
W3C Staff Contact, SVG, WebApps, Web Events, and Audio WGs

Received on Tuesday, 19 July 2011 04:35:22 UTC