RE: Text 'width' and 'height'

Hello all,

Thought I'd add my two cents on text width and height to the discussion.
As an implementor of SVG,  it seems to me that making this information
[optionally] available in the file may very well speed rendering  in some
cases (I'm thinking tspans and such), and certainly would make migrating to
SVG from other markup languages a little easier.  The danger of course is
that there may not be a be an exact match on what is rendered and what is
given/expected for a whole host of reasons (font matching comes to mind
here first and foremost)....

Mike Paolini
IBM SVG Team
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"A doctor can bury his mistakes, an architect can only advise his client to
plant vines...." -Frank Lloyd Wright

Internet ID: paolini@us.ibm.com
IBM Internal e-mail ID: PAOLINI/Austin/IBM


Gaetan Frenoy <gaetan.frenoy@aspentech.com> on 01/11/2000 03:30:50 AM

To:   Jan Aarsaether <jaa@metis.no>
cc:   www-svg@w3.org
Subject:  RE: Text 'width' and 'height' [was: Happy New Year SVGers]

     Hi all,

     We are also converting our existing language into a SVG-compatible
 language.  I have almost done the job too.

     Unfortunatly, I have big big bIIIIg troubles to match our
 existing texts with the syntax of SVG.

     Our texts are always defined within a rectangle box and
 an alignment policy into this box (eg: center/middle or bottom/right).

     I've searched for hours into the SVG specifications to find
 something that could match this need without any valuable result :(

     I think this can be a drawback for SVG in the future and
 I'm joining Jan to ask to the SVG comittee to provide a solution to
 this problem.

     Thank you,

--
Gaëtan Frenoy (aka Gaff)
Aspen Technology, Inc.
AspenTech Nivelles - 20, rue de l'industrie - 1400 Nivelles
Tel : 32-67-88.36.66 - Fax: 32-67-88.36.88
e-mail: mailto:gaetan.frenoy@aspentech.com
web site: http://www.aspentech.com



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jan Aarsaether [mailto:jaa@metis.no]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2000 10:16 AM
> To: Chris Lilley
> Cc: www-svg@w3.org
> Subject: Text 'width' and 'height' [was: Happy New Year SVGers]
>
>
>
> Chris Lilley wrote:
> > I just wanted to wish all SVG users and implementors a Happy New
> > Vectorial Year,
>
> Likewise :->
>
> > and keep those reports of new or updated implementations, use cases,
> > examples, and any sort of spec feedback coming in!
>
> SVG is a big language (there must be a loooooot of people on the SVG
> committee :-) with lots of alternative ways of doing the same thing.
> But we are now getting close to finishing the job of converting our
> symbol format into SVG. However, we're having trouble with the <text>
> element.
>
> We are not just rendering vector symbols, but creating primitives
> which the user can modify interactively using our symbol editor. In
> the <text> case, it is even possible for the system to change the
> content of the text whenever properties/criteria change (macros).
> Because of this, it is common to 'reserve' a certain rectangular space
> for the <text> element to fit into the rest of the symbol and our
> system does wrapping and clipping within this rectangle before
> painting the primitive.
>
> But, SVG only specifies 'x' and 'y' attributes on <text>. We need
> 'width' and 'height' (similar to the <rect> element) to be able to
> persistently store our information using SVG. This is especially
> important with 'right' and 'bottom' adjusted texts. We also use the
> rectangle actively by allowing the user to control the background
> color, but we can do without this feature.
>
> We realize that (most?) SVG renders can do without these additional
> attributes, but I would expect other applications to have similar
> needs as described above. Has anybody stumbled upon this before? Is
> there any chance of appending this to the SVG specs? If not, we would
> have to resort to some kind of hack :-< Or maybe there is some way of
> doing this in the existing specs which we haven't found. Tips and
> feedback would be highly appreciated!
>
> ---
> Jan Aarsaether              jaa@metis.no
> METIS GUI Development
> NCR Norge AS
>