RE: SVG Plugin from Adobe

Hi Bruce,

Them's kind words but I guess your book editor was too easily convinced by
the long hair and beard <grin/>.

It is true that Amaya's support for SVG is at this stage very limited and
lacks some crucial elements like path (although it is being worked on as we
speak). You are correct about the first example I gave - it should have been
http://www.w3.org/2000/Talks/1116-oz/slide31-0

As I said in the original post, mixed namespace content is not something that
browsers are very good at yet outside a few special examples. I believe that
Mozilla can in fact handle the examples like Amaya does (but with more
elements supported). Since I also used Amaya to edit them, and since they do
provide content in other browsers, I was happy with that (these are slides
from a presentation I gave, so don't always make a lot of sense out of
context).

I think in the HTML world people will be using OBJECT or its cousins for a
while yet. In the XML world people are inclined to use SVG as a layout
language for presenting content. Which brings up the question again of
whether it is better to use CSS and classes in an existing format, or to work
on proper namespace support in browsers...

Cheers

Charles

On Tue, 26 Dec 2000, Bailey, Bruce wrote:

  Dear Charles,
  You're definitely a guru in my book.
  I hope you don't mind experimenting with this a little more!
  I am sure it's me, but please double check the URLs you gave.
  I tried IE 5 / NN 4 (on the Mac, no Adobe SVG plugin) and Lynx, Amaya, IE 5,
  NN 4 and 6 (on the PC, w/ Adobe SVG plugin).
  On all platforms, slide32 brought up a PNG graphic.  There was ALT text, but
  no other (non-trivial) text nor links (aside from the navigation buttons).
  Slide40 was on RDF and only Amaya handled it correctly.
  I was distressed to discover that Amaya could not handle the Adobe SVG
  examples at URL <http://www.adobe.com/svg/demos/>

  > -----Original Message-----
  > From: Charles McCathieNevile [mailto:charles@w3.org]
  > Sent: Saturday, December 23, 2000 2:44 PM
  > To: Bailey, Bruce
  > Cc: 'w3c-wai-gl@w3.org'; 'Kynn Bartlett'; 'Leonard R. Kasday'
  > Subject: RE: SVG Plugin from Adobe
  >
  >
  > Hmmm, I don't figure that I need to qualify as an SVG guru
  > for this one, so
  > here goes <grin/>
  >
  > If you read http://www.w3.org/2000/Talks/1116-oz/slide32-0 or
  > http://www.w3.org/2000/Talks/1116-oz/slide40-0 with something
  > other than
  > Amaya, you will almost certainly get some text (the first one
  > should also
  > include a link). If you read it with Amaya you will see an
  > SVG embedded using
  > the XML namespaces mechanism.  (unless you are using a
  > screenreader on the
  > text-only screen, and then you get the text-type stuff)
  > That's one way to
  > make things work. For a variety of reasons I think it is long
  > term the ost
  > promising one. But aside from Office 2000 the major areas where
  > namespace-based XML is being implemented is in XSLT processors (mostly
  > "behind the scenes magic, although they are available in
  > browsers) and in RDF
  > tools (where it seems fairly commonplace).
  >
  > Another approach is to tell your browser to use an XML
  > browsing application
  > to handle SVG, and provide a user style sheet - an example
  > one that you could
  > use is given in the Note "Accessibility Features of SVG" -
  > http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG-access - for this purpose. (If
  > anyone wants to write
  > some neat XSLT for processing SVG into something even
  > smarter, I would be
  > really glad...)
  >
  > cheers
  >
  > Charles McCN
  >
  >
  >
  > On Thu, 21 Dec 2000, Bailey, Bruce wrote:
  >
  >   Dear Group,
  > [snip]
  >   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


-- 
Charles McCathieNevile    mailto:charles@w3.org    phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative                      http://www.w3.org/WAI
Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053, Australia
until 6 January 2001 at:
W3C INRIA, 2004 Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France

Received on Tuesday, 26 December 2000 10:05:41 UTC