Re: First Drafts of SVG 1.1 and SVG Mobile; new Test Suite release

Section 10.1 of the new spec looks promising:

In order to achieve interoperability between SVG content generators and SVG user agents, the next draft of the SVG 1.1 specification may describe a technique for defining the reference coordinate system used by an SVG document fragment that contains positional information (e.g. that path segment data is in WGS84 latitude/longitude). The SVG Working Group will not invent any metadata standards for this data; it will use existing metadata elements for the task and define how they should be included in an SVG fragment. 

Does this indeed mean that it would be possible to say that a rectangle is two meters by three meters and otherwise use actual units?

However, the next paragraph is disturbing:

This should simplify overlaying SVG document fragments and including live global positioning data. It will not require that the SVG user agent provide any transformation of the data above that described in SVG 1.0. 

It seems to me essential to be able to set a scale from real-world units like meters to onscreen units and expect the browser to obey that scale factor. This is essential for CAD and other technical drawing systems. The lack of it is a major flaw in SVG 1.0. 

Perhaps my confusion is about parsing the word "It" in the above sentence. Does "It" refer to the specification or the new functionality? I.e. does this mean that the working group thinks that adding this functionality will not require user agents to  "provide any transformation of the data above that described in SVG 1.0." or does it mean that the working group thinks that such transformation is required, but that the spec is not going to require user agents to add it? Or am I just confused about what section 10.1 is talking about in the first place? 
-- 

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| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
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Received on Wednesday, 31 October 2001 08:30:38 UTC