- From: Liam R. E. Quin <liamquin@interlog.com>
- Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 19:50:42 -0500 (EST)
- To: Don Park <donpark@docuverse.com>
- cc: martind@netfolder.com, "'Jon Ferraiolo'" <jferraio@adobe.com>, "'Elliotte Rusty Harold'" <elharo@metalab.unc.edu>, xml-dev@xml.org, www-svg@w3.org
Is this all an Intel conspiracy to sell 1GHz PCs to run web browsers? Interchange of 2d graphics is, a very difficult problem to solve. But is XML the right approach, and, if it is, is the DOM appropriate? I saw the DOM as a compromise effort to get Microsoft and Netscape to agree on an API for browser access. I don't like it as a general panacea for an XML API. For one thing, it assumes that a node has only one parent, making reuse of components difficult. If you wwanted to give access to a Unix file system using DOM, you'd have to decide what to do about linked files (hard links, not symbolic, which are like entity refs). This is not to criticise the DOM, because it succeeded in its objective, as I see it, to a very large degree. It's to criticise projects that use the DOM without asking why they are doing so. Do I want DOM access to graphics? Well, not particularly. I'd rather have functions like IntersectedArea(path1, path2). The wonderful thing about PostScript is that the same graphics model is used at every level, including within glyphs. Does this mean we need SVG fonts, adding yet more complexity? Lee -- Liam Quin, Barefoot Computing, Toronto; The barefoot programmer Ankh on irc.sorcery.net, http://www.holoweb.net/~liam/ co-author, The XML Specification Guide forthcoming: The Open Source XML Database Toolkit
Received on Thursday, 9 March 2000 19:47:40 UTC