Re: Text 'width' and 'height' [was: Happy New Year SVGers]

Jon Ferraiolo wrote:
> Gaetan,
> I just responded to Jan's request. My response will probably disappoint you.

I know this wasn't directed to me, but to clearify our needs, I'll
provide you with our answers to these questions.

> Just to make sure that we understand your requireements:
> 
> 1) Do you want/need SVG to do text wrapping within a particular,
> well-defined rectangular area?

Yes, this would be nice and map very well with our application.

> 2) Do you want/need SVG to have objects grow based on the size of the text
> within the object (e.g., a rectangle whose size depends on the dimensions
> of text that is inside of the rectangle)?

No. It is actually important that the text object's size stays
constant until the user specifically changes the width or height
either through DOM or interactively as in our tool.

> 3) What are your text alignment needs? The latest draft of SVG has
> 'text-anchor:start|middle|end', which provides for left/center/right
> alignment of text relative to a particular point on the canvas (assuming
> horizontal flowing text). For vertical alignment of horizontal flowing
> text, you can use the 'glyph-anchor' property (might get a new name before
> we are done), such as 'glyph-anchor: centerline'. These two properties give
> you horizontal and vertical alignment facilities for a single line of text.
> Do you need more capability than this for text alignment?

This will do for us. But it is important that alignment works with
respect to the text element's total size.
 
> I'm asking these questions so that we can understand your particular
> requirements. However, at this late date, significant changes to SVG 1.0
> will meet with lots of resistance, so don't get your hopes up. (We had our
> Last Call on August 12.)

Understood, but what we need is hopefully not too difficult. The most
important is to add 'width' and 'height' as (optional) properties to
<text> and adjust the aligment to work with these. Hope this does not
involve too significant changes which prevents it from making it into
the next (final?) specifications. It would make it much easier
(possible) for applications as ours to port to SVG.  Looks like Gaetan
Frenoy has very similar needs - there probably are others out there
too. If so, I guess these should speak up ASAP :->

Thanks for listening to us.

---
Jan Aarsaether			jaa@metis.no
METIS GUI Development	
NCR Norge AS

Received on Wednesday, 12 January 2000 04:18:04 UTC