Re: Stroked textpath with underline, overline and strikethrough attributes

Thierry,
SVG supports underlining and strikethroughs because we felt that it might
be useful for some applications if SVG supported the 'text-decoration'
property that is defined in CSS2. All we have done with SVG is say that
conforming implementations need to support the 'text-decoration' property.
We haven't attempted to extend the features of CSS2 in this area for the
sake of SVG.

The limitations you are pointing out with underlining apply equally to HTML
styled with CSS. There, you have the same limitation of the underline
having the same visual characteristics as the text string being underlined.
I would argue that extending underlining is more in the domain of the CSS
working group than the SVG working group.

To give real control over underlining and strikethroughs, you would need
several new properties. You would want to control the color of the
underline independently of the text itself. Theoretically, with SVG, you
would want to allow all of the fill and stroke properties to be specified
to the underline separately. Finally, you would want the ability to adjust
the vertical offset of the underline (or other decorative line).

I should also mention that typography gurus recommend against underlining
when your goal is professional looking graphics. I think this bias against
underlining might be one of the reasons the CSS working group hasn't gotten
around to defining a bunch of properties yet to give more control to
underlining.

Typography experts say that if you insist on underlining, the
characteristics of the underline should be specified in the font itself so
that the thickness and placement of the underline match the visual
characteristics of the font. In deference to this, SVG fonts have
properties to control the thickness and placement of underlines. However,
there is no facility for rendering the underline different than the text
itelf.

Jon Ferraiolo
SVG Editor
Adobe Systems Incorporated


At 02:29 PM 2/23/00 +0100, Thierry Kormann wrote:
>Hi,
>
>After discussion, here are the screenshots of what
>we get with stroked textpath with underline, overline 
>and strikethrough attributes.
>
>The result is not really nice but is it what the WG
>expected ?
>
>The first screenshot simply shows
>the same rendering problem with a text element 
>and a tspan with dx and dy attributes.
>
>Any comments ?
>Thierry
>
>-- 
>Thierry Kormann
>email: Thierry.Kormann@sophia.inria.fr  http://www.inria.fr/koala/tkormann/
>Koala/Dyade/Bull @ INRIA - Sophia Antipolis
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 23 February 2000 12:28:25 UTC