Re: Questions about animation

On Mon, Jul 8 2002 Jason Foster wrote:

> 
> I've been having fun reading the SMIL spec (to better understand what's 
> happening with SVG, to be honest) and was wondering about a few aspects of 
> the animation modules.  Some of the wonderings may also be suggestions for 
> change, albeit uninformed ones.
> 
> As an FYI, my goal is to use SMIL to emulate some of the visual interface 
> effects of OS/X.
> 
> My first question is whether there is a way to be notified when all members 
> of a set of animations have completed?  As I understand timings, the "begin"
>   attribute specifies a list of conditions which are "OR"ed together.  In 
> other words if any of the conditions fire, then the animation begins.  I 
> was hoping to be notified when *all* of the conditions are true.

You might be able to put all the animations in a <par> and trigger on
the end of that par.

> My second question is whether it would be possible to add in a scripting 
> module?  It would be nice to be able to say "execute this script once the 
> following set of animations has completed".

There is no support for scripting in SMIL.  What you might be able to
do is have a auto-firing hyperlink (actuate="onLoad") to the script.

> My last question is related to the "fill" attribute.  As I understand it, 
> there is no predefined way to update the DOM from the OM.  A "fill" value 
> of "freeze" simply means that the last value of the OM persists, not that 
> the DOM has changed.  Consider the following animation:
> 
> <animate
>    id="Scrolldown"
>    attributeName="y"
>    by="+10"
>    dur="1s"
>    fill="freeze"
> />
> 
> It works great the first time.  Unfortunately subsequent applications don'
> t work after that, as it takes the initial value from the DOM, which has 
> not been updated.  I was hoping to define a number of such animations that 
> I could reuse to manipulate my presentation, but I don't think that it's 
> currently possible.  Is there any reason not to add a new value for "fill"
>   of "update" that would update the DOM, as opposed to being limited to the 
> OM?

Have you looked at additive animations?  (additive="sum") in
http://www.w3.org/TR/smil20/animation.html#animationNS-AdditiveAnim

> Thanks for any comments.  SMIL looks to be pretty interesting, and very 
> useful; it's just a little tricky to understand for the first time :)
> 
> Jason Foster
> 

-- Sjoerd Mullender <sjoerd@acm.org>

Received on Monday, 8 July 2002 11:42:44 UTC