Fallback for broken references.

Hi,

In SVG, you can include content from one document in another, this is
very useful of course, the problem comes that when it fails, we get no
indication of anything going wrong, meaning you can get odd results if
the link is broken (perhaps because the SVG was saved locally, or the web
connection broke mid transfer)

The meaning of a document can radically change. I've got a rather
contrived Llama demo <URL: http://jibbering.com/2002/8/thellamas.svg > *
which gives a very different message in Batik and ASV (which doesn't
support external TREF's). Dean Jackson's SVG to text converter also
demonstrates the problem which shows how much cleverer SVG Access
Technologies need to be due to the ability to refer to external
documents, although the TEXT to HTML at least makes the user aware.

I'm not sure what suggestion to make, perhaps even just require user
agents to make the user aware that some content is missing, as the
duplicating of fallback content rather defeats the object.

Jim.

* but not as contrived as the cat/mat demo.

Received on Monday, 28 October 2002 13:39:57 UTC