Re: Adding simple graphics in HTML

I was under the impression that the problem involved displaying graphs,
which cannot be emulated through ASCII art. This is why I suggested vector
graphics: the data can be represented exactly, the file size can be smaller
if the proper medium is used, and extra functionality is possible. It
certainly beats using huge gif's, or jpg's for a simple graph!

Daniel [inanis (edf)]

----- Original Message -----
From: Ian Samson
To: Zhixian, Ong
Cc: www-html@w3.org
Sent: Monday, February 15, 1999 9:19 PM
Subject: Re: Adding simple graphics in HTML


I have worked in an academic environment for 12 years and not one person has
complained that HTML is incapable of doing "simple graphics" for "lines and
boxes". Lines and boxes are extended ASCII characters, used to their
advantage in the DOS environment.

How do you propose using Line Drawing Characters in a graphical environment
where there are hundreds or thousands of different font types and character
sets?

Surely the academics would by now have developed this if it were remotely
possible ... considering the history of the Internet!

How would you propose adding these into HTML? If you propose using &#ltc; or
<LTC> (for left top corner) and &#rtc; or <RTC> for right top corner, or
<VB> (not VisualBasic) but "vertical bar" etc., how would you align the
characters? Even if you used x,y co-ordinates it may still appear peculiar
on different monitors with different resolutions and different pixel sizes.

Would your proposal be limited to English only or would it include other
languages? How then do you propose this to be achieved?

Even if it were possible, there are so many graphics editors around today
that simple lines and boxes (e.g. flow charts) are reproduced simply and
easily. One could create one's flow chart in, for example, Microsoft
PowerPoint or Corel or whatever, and save it as an image.

Finally, would your proposed addition to an already over-extended language
be required for multi-platforms, i.e. Lynx on UNIX, MAC, etc.?

If you really want to get fancy, perhaps one of the programming languages
such as Java could resolve this issue, but then maybe they have thought of
this too and decided it isn't possible .....


On 15 Feb 99, at 12:39, Zhixian, Ong <Ong123Z@URegina.CA> wrote:

> Dear Sir,
> So far in the development of HTML, all graphics are inserted
> in HTML documents through the <IMAGE> tag. This is fine for pictures, I
> suppose but I note that for academic usage, most people only need to use
> lines and boxes to draw out flowcharts and miscellaneous stuff. In short,
> they only need simple graphics. Thus, my suggestion to the committee of
> the developers of HTML is: Why don't you add a set of HTML tags that will
> draw simple graphics in HTML documents? Or does this exist already? In the
> event that you want to take up on my suggestion, I suggest modelling the
> graphics tags after PostScript. Anyway, thanks for listening.



-----------------------------------------------------
Regards,

Ian Samson
Internet Publishing
Human Sciences Research Council, Pretoria, South Africa
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http://www.hsrc.ac.za/
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Received on Tuesday, 16 February 1999 22:37:11 UTC