Request for path having child paths or being composed of point elements

I just happen to think that xsl is the best invention since sliced 
bread. And want to be able to process everything xml using xsl. It just 
happens that I want to reverse a svg cubic spline path using xsl and 
there is no easy way to do it. The svg was generated by Corel Draw. The 
reason in case you think its absurd is to have N unclosed paths that 
represent boundaries in an archaeology dig and then form the closed path 
for each layer from two horizontal paths and then fill them with a 
colour. Each path would be in 2 parent paths.

Idea 1: Path composed of child paths
<path id="x" .../><path id="y" .../>
<path d="f x r y"/>
f= forward path
r= reverse path
(maybe with the restriction that they cant be relative paths)

Idea 2:
For paths it would be nice to have a syntax that could be processed with 
xsl so instead of: <path d="M 0 0 C 100 100 .. "/>
have
<path>
<action type="M" x="0" y="0"/>
<action type="C" x="100" y="100"/>
....
</path>

Then anyone could invert the order of the path (ok maybe for relative 
paths the maths involved is too dificult to do in xsl- this mainly to do 
with the way the way the curve is calculated. See email
Re: Clarification of Parameters to Relative Cubic Bezier Spline / Bug
) but Im sure that there is a call for this.

Not everyone will be using software to generate the svg. What about web 
services that generate xml from a database and get processed by a xsl 
transformation.

I think the <path d attribute breaks the idea of xml, and there should 
be elements that have the same funcionality.

I understand that the idea is to have a compact reprentation but it 
would be good to have an alternative.

By the way is there any other way to do what I want?

Thanks in advance

Andy Bailey

Received on Monday, 16 June 2003 17:40:17 UTC