Re: [SVG] Experiment and proposal

At 06:55 PM 4/15/2003 -0400, Fred P. wrote:
>>It's not the DISPLAY of the text/tables, but the LAYOUT of 
>>them!   >Layout of tables, esp. those that support all of the features of 
>>XHTML is quite complex, and that belongs to the XHTML formatter.   There 
>>is already a way for SVG to "drop out" to other XML renders, which is the 
>>correct way to handle this.
>
>What do you mean by "drop out", please provide code samples
>or links or something proving your point, because I don't
>understand what you mean here.

         It's the <foreignObject> tag in SVG (see 
<http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG11/extend.html#EmbeddingForeignObjects>), however, 
the current version of the Adobe SVG viewer doesn't support this tag - 
though other viewers or future updates might/will.


>Anyway, how do you handle displaying something that mix
>XHTML/SVG a LOT in a non easy way.

         The correct way is using <foreignObject> - but that doesn't mean 
that you can do it today.


>Currently, this would mean
>that alot of SVG and XHTML and DHTML and JavaScript
>would have to be used in a very complicated way to provide
>text layout and graphics layout in a moveable PDF fashion.

         PDF doesn't support movement of content, since unlike SVG content 
is not exposed to the JavaScript DOM in a PDF file...

         So if you are comparing against PDF, then I don't understand.  For 
static documents, PDF and SVG are equivalent though the use of explicit 
position of ALL objects (text, vectors, rasters, etc.).  For dynamic 
documents, SVG has the DOM but PDF does not.


>I mean if you gonna write a SVG viewer engine, then you probably
>have the skills to write a proper XHTML layout engine at the same time.

         Not at all!   SVG is MUCH easier than XHTML because it's all 
fixed/explicitly positioned elements, while XHTML is a completely dynamic 
(ie. on-the-fly layout) system.   It is therefore MUCH more complex to do 
XHTML, esp. for non-Roman languages.


>I mean having to calculate the height, width, spacing
>manually for each line of a paragraph is kind of overkill.

         But you do this in your authoring application and NOT (usually) 
on-the-fly in the JS/DOM of the SVG...


>Not to mention having simple stuff like
><center> or "text-align: center;"

         text-align:center is fully supported in SVG.


>Not to mention that having flexible table makes the SVG image
>"flexible" in height-width and size, therefore making it more scalable.

         That seems to be the point you are missing.  SVG (today) is NOT 
about dynamic layout (as XHTML is), it's about static/fixed layout of 
elements - that could potentially reposition themselves.


>Basically, I want to have LAYOUT FLEXIBILITY inside SVG itself =)
>- Zoom in/out
>- Resize
>- Move

         SVG fully supports all of that...but none of that effects the 
layout because it's based on fixed positions and mathematical 
transformations for scale/zoom INSTEAD of content reflow/relayout as XHTML 
is.

         I think once you understand that the two are different systems for 
different purposes, you'll go further with both...


>>         You can embed bitmaps just fine in SVG using CDATA sections.
>>Adobe Illustrator (and other SVG authoring apps) give you that option.
>
>I don't have Adobe Illustrator, so I dunno about it.

         So what are you using as a graphic editor for SVG to help you 
author and understand what can be done?


>Provide a link or code sample showing this,
>I really want to see how this is done.

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Received on Tuesday, 15 April 2003 19:42:05 UTC