Re: SVG 1.2 Comment: 4 Flowing text and graphics

Also sprach Peter Sorotokin:

 > > > 4 Flowing text and graphics
 > >
 > >This section seems to reinvent large parts of HTML and CSS (albeit in
 > >a semantically poorer manner) in order to achieve a single effect.
 > 
 > I am puzzled. What exactly does it reinvent in HTML or CSS? Line breaks? 
 > SVG 1.1 already has text layout within a line and text on the path. SVG 1.2 
 > does not add any semantic ("XHTML") features to SVG 1.1, it merely 
 > introduces additional text layout mechanism, mostly built on top of SVG 
 > 1.1. Why is it somehow OK to have single line text flow with all complex 
 > internationalization features (baselines, bidi, vertical text, glyph 
 > orientation) and text-on-the-path and somehow not OK to have (much simpler 
 > to implement!) text in the shape?

The problem lies in how different specs interact. Placing strings of
text on a line or on a path nicely complements vector graphics and
naturally belongs in SVG. When you add flowing text you turn SVG from
a vector graphics format to a generic document format. This may be a
simple change in your spec and code, but it has a huge impact on how
content is authored on the web. HTML has traditionally had this role
and making a second language duplicate the functionality seems to
create unnecessary competition between specifications that would be
better off collaborating. W3C's efforts in Compound Documents is a
welcome effort to ensure that specs can collaborate in this manner.

Another way to answer your question would be to turn it around: what
exactly is wrong with CSS4 introducing polygons, background gradients
and animation when we already have borders, background images and
text-decoration: blink?

 > Also, our implementation feedback 
 > is that you need to add about 10-20% of the code (was 10% in our code) in 
 > the text layout module to get line breaking working even for arbitrary 
 > shapes. All complexity in text layout comes from internationalization, and 
 > incrementability, not line breaking.

This is great, the simpler the better. But your code isn't tied to the
author using SVG markup, is it?

 > As for your proposal, given our experience on text layout feature
 > design, it is unlikely that we have enough time to review it before
 > PR.

I think it's wise to review last call comments before PR.

Cheers,

-h&kon
              Håkon Wium Lie                          CTO °þe®ª
howcome@opera.com                  http://people.opera.com/howcome

Received on Monday, 1 November 2004 21:09:18 UTC