Re: Towards resolution of SVG 1.2 Flowing text

On Tue, 2 Nov 2004, Dean Jackson wrote:
> 
> - do you accept Peter's statement that SVG 1.0/1.1 already
>   has text flow and line breaking, and effectively all SVG 1.2 adds
>   is *automatic* line breaking?

It adds word-wrapping, flowing to a shape, separation of a block of text 
into separate paragraphs, markup for indicating sections, paragraphs, 
inline images, spans of text, lines, and line breaks, and events to 
indicate that overflow has occured.

So no.


> - do you believe UAX 14 addresses the needs for automatic line
>   breaking? (eg. interoperability, CSS not available, internationalised
>   text support)

UAX 14 is woefully inadequate for describing required line breaking 
behaviour. Requiring UAX 14 compliance dramantically restricts the ability 
for user agents to achieve optimum line breaking (as, in fact, UAX 14 
itself points out in the introduction), for example it prevents handling 
of hyphentation and doesn't allow for adaptive balancing justification 
algorithms.

So no.

Note that I am not convinced that interoperability on the exact line 
breaking algorithm is required for optimum user experience, especially 
when it comes to Web standards.


> Actually, your last call comments don't suggest we drop this feature.

My apologies for not being clear. I believe the features currently in SVG 
1.2 chapter 4 Flowing text and graphics should not procede past last call 
in their current state.

I do agree that flowing text is a feature of interest. For images, I think 
the better solution would be for word wrapping to be performed at 
authoring time (possibly using extensions for authoring tools to use so 
that they can agree on what to wrap around what). For documents and 
applications, I believe the content should be in another, more appropriate 
namespace, and wrapping should be achieved by leveraging SVG in the 
presentation layer (as my 'overflow' proposal does).

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Thursday, 4 November 2004 00:25:45 UTC