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

Hmm, maybe the answer should be that ChaalzToolz (Pat Pend, (tm), (r), <g>,
<nrc>, etc...) uses an architecture that sets the size of an image according
to the font size in the page (I have a very clever person thinking about this
now, and if they figure it out I hope they tell us all including me <grin/>).

In fact I am more likely to include SVG in a page via the use of namespaces.
Then I can specify the size of the SVG in terms of em or ex, and it will
figure it out for itself. In old browsers and XML browsers without specific
SVG support it will produce text versions. This will work in Amaya as soon as
it determines the user space from the viewbox (correct behaviour - there is
currently a bug or two in teh SVG support, which is still being developed).

An alternative that should work is to include the SVG without specifying a
size, and then let the SVG inherit its size from teh user stylesheet
generated by the browser. But this currently still has implementation issues
- I will take them up with the developers of the Adobe plugin at least, and
have just been talking about it to the Batik Team (which is the CSIRO and
Koala/Jackaroo projects' combined effort).

Cheers

Charles McCN

On Thu, 4 Jan 2001, Kynn Bartlett wrote:

  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



-- 
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 Thursday, 4 January 2001 07:49:41 UTC