Re: border="" was Re: transparency: active, transparency: inactiv e

Dave J Woolley wrote:

> He can't use SVG paths directly, or use image maps, because
> the level of abstraction is too high. 

That is not true - there is nothing wrong with paths. Clearly the
audience would draw by copying or dragging such paths, not by typing
their syntax, but that is also the usual method for the rest of us as
well.

> Painting is seen as
> natural, but working with shapes, is not.
> 
> He's on a tight budget, so he is also trying to use scripted
> HTML as an authoring tool, which I think explains the
> concentration on clicking and dragging. This and the need of
> absolute simplicity means he is unlikely to find suitable
> tools that can infer an image map or vector representation
> from painting actions.

Sort of like this site?

http://www.adobe.com/svg/demos/svgDraw/svgDraw/index.html

> 
> In trying to implement his tool he has discovered that the
> de facto browser implementations of transparency are not of
> the intuitive form he expects, so he is trying to get W3C to
> standardise transparency in the way he expects, 

Well, he should check out what the SVG spec says before declaring it
insufficient for his needs.

> WHen he is writing about borders, he is talking about the
> natural concept of a border on an irregular shape, not the
> formal, rectangular, definition in CSS.

Yes, clearly. Again, SVG has the same concept that he does.

> Personally, I think that HTML is inappropriate for the final
> document, and SVG should be used instead, 

I agree completely.

> and that it is
> taking HTML too far too try and use it for writing graphic
> layout tools.  However, styles extend beyond HTML, so the
> issues potentially apply to SVG etc.,

Yes, clearly, but the use of CSS in SVG does not cause the problems he
seems to think it does.

>  although, again, I
> have reservations about using a scripted document language
> as an authoring tool for that language.

It seems to work OK in practice, see the URL above.

-- 
Chris

Received on Thursday, 12 July 2001 18:07:45 UTC