RE: SVG Plugin from Adobe (sizing, flowing, and mixed media)

At 05:45 PM 1/3/2001 , Al Gilman wrote:
>At 08:20 AM 2001-01-03 -0500, Bailey, Bruce wrote: 
> > If the SVG is on an html page, then the size is fixed by the height and 
> > width of the embed or object tags. That's standard html behavior for images, plugins, Java applets, etc. 
>AG::
>So, how should this behave instead?

 From a user's point of view, I think it's bizarre that a user
should need to maintain separate settings for font size based
on a distinction that they are unable to grok.

Here's an example:

(a) The Kynn-O-Matic (tm) web editing program home page is
     made entirely with XHTML + CSS and no textual images.  (There
     are some screenshots and illustrations, however.)  Suzanne
     comes to the page and changes the size of her text.  The
     "navigation buttons" increase in size the same amount as the
     text of the page.

(b) Next, Suzanne goes to look at the Sean-In-A-Box software's
     page.  That one is built using graphical text -- gif files
     as buttons.  Suzanne also changes her font size and the
     text on the page increases, but the gif files do not.

(c) Finally, Suzanne checks out the ChaalzToolz home page.  This
     one is made using SVG, and fortunately, Suzanne installed an
     SVG plugin a few months back.  She changes the size of the
     text...and like case (b), the navigation buttons do not
     change, but the body text changes.

Suzanne is confused.  She doesn't know SVG from GIF from CSS,
nor should she be expected to.  Suzanne simply wants to be able
to read the navigation buttons.  She _definitely_ won't know that
she can right-click on Chaalz's navigation buttons and adjust
the size (but not the viewport size) -- how on Earth would she
know that, and know when to expect it?  She can't do it with
GIFs or JPEGs and those are far more common.

SVG should be able to read the browser's default font size, and
if the SVG is built properly (using relative, not absolute font
sizes), it should scale appropriately.

Now here's a dumb question for you -- can you set the size of a
image, plugin, or applet in _ems_?  And if you do, and you change
your font size, will those "viewports" resize themselves magically?

I admit I haven't ever tested this, nor even thought about it,
really.  Maybe it's a dumb idea, or maybe it's a cool idea.  I
don't know.  If it works, it might be a technique for SVG and
other scalable graphics formats.

--Kynn

-- 
Kynn Bartlett  <kynn@idyllmtn.com>                    http://kynn.com/
Sr. Engineering Project Leader, Reef-Edapta       http://www.reef.com/
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain Internet   http://www.idyllmtn.com/
Contributor, Special Edition Using XHTML     http://kynn.com/+seuxhtml
Unofficial Section 508 Checklist           http://kynn.com/+section508

Received on Thursday, 4 January 2001 03:16:31 UTC