is scientific notation allowed in numbers?

In path data, is it OK to output floating point 
coordinates in scientific notation?

In other words, can I write
   3.450000e-004
instead of
   0.000345

The specification should make it clear if this is
allowed or not.

This issue is very important. Many if not most 
applications that generate SVG files will use the
C library function "printf()" to emit coordinates.
For very small numbers the printf() function 
sometimes uses the scientific notation. If this is
not allowed then SVG generators should take special
precaution to avoid scientific notation.

Ideally the SVG spec must explicitly allow numbers
in scientific notation so that SVG viewers will be
prepared to handle this.

Some format specifications are silent about this
issue and that causes problems. For example, Adobe
Illustrator barfs if it find a number in scientific
notation. But AI documentation doesn't warn you
about it. Products fail in the field because of this
omission in the specs.


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Received on Saturday, 13 November 1999 18:50:33 UTC