RE: SVG Plugin from Adobe

Dear Group,

Like a few others in this group, as much as anything I use this list as an
extension of my brain -- sort of a public thinking out loud kind of
technique.  My apologies to anyone who is offended by this, but I will
probably keep it up so long as I don't get flamed too badly.

Let me run this by you...

Has anybody experimented much using relative units for graphics?  Like most
on this list, I assumed that Checkpoint 3.4 applied only to text-oriented
elements -- and that specifying exact IMG height and width size in pixels
was of course not a problem.
From my read of the HTML 4.01 specs, specifying height and width in em units
(for example) is NOT allowed and that XHTML 1.0 doesn't change this.  Am I
correct on this point?

I experimented with a navigation button bar (individual graphics, not an
image map).  The only relative unit I got to work at all was when I
specified something like width="10%" (with the height attribute omitted).
This, of course, was not of much utility in stretching the graphics (since
the window wouldn't get any bigger than the full size of my screen).  I
could use this to shrink the images, but how helpful is that!  I could not
get an acceptable rendering with the 4x browsers using height="5%" (with or
without a width attribute) nor using height="1*" width="4*" nor using
height="2em width="12em".  My testing was hardly comprehensive, but I think
I hit a dead end.

The point of all this was, of course, if any of these techniques worked --
then SVG would have distinctive advantages over bitmaps in terms of how good
the image looked when scaled -- and dynamic scaling by changing the default
font size would be possible.

Len (and anyone else interested), I was hoping you might experiment some
with these ideas and, if you have any success, add the results to your most
excellent resources at URL:
<http://astro.temple.edu/~kasday/wai/>
(Isn't that nice of me to try and give an assignment to someone who doesn't
work for me?  Especially around the holidays!  Smile!)

Kynn (and anyone else who can help me with my understanding), I am reluctant
to mention it, but I do have a bone to throw you with regard to your
apparent contempt for SVG.  I understood that one of the potential promises
for SVG was its accessible to screen reader and text-only browsers.  I don't
see that in practice.  Textual information is, of course, embedded in the
SVG file.  This is, of course, in theory much better than relying on the
good will of the author to provide a separate and stand-alone textual
equivalent.  As it stands now, Lynx users just get <q>[EMBED]</q>.  I could
not get JAWS to do anything with an SVG file from within IE 5.

I did have one partial success.  I renamed an SVG file (from Adobe) from
clock.svg to clock.htm.  Opening the local file in IE revealed text!
Opening the local file in Lynx revealed text!  This was quite neat I
thought.

Can any SVG gurus on this list speak to how this aspect is suppose to work
in theory and practice?

Cheers,
Bruce

Received on Thursday, 21 December 2000 13:31:26 UTC