RE: SVG 1.2 Comment: vector effects

As a content creator, I agree with all of Peter's points, and would like to
add this crucial bit:

-there is a need in the community to do all of the above dynamically, using
script. In this case, the "authoring tool" is a block of JavaScript that
creates the content on the fly; forcing each author to recreate the things
that would possible in Vector Effects, using script, in unreasonable. 

For a very simple example, making a double stroke around a complex shape
would require me to mathematically recalculate the dimensons of the shape,
and include another slightly larger version of the shape with stroke only.
This screws up the semantics of SVG, since there are now 2 shapes,
pretending to be just one. What if a user clicks on the larger shape, in the
case of something interactive? Oh, now I have to make a special way to
handle that in the script. What if a screen reader is counting the instances
of that shape? It will miscount, because of a particular styling need. And
as I said, this is a very simple case. 

Regards-
-Doug

Peter Sorotokin wrote:
| 
| 
| At 08:45 AM 10/31/2004 +0000, Ian Hickson wrote:
| > > 9 Vector effects
| >
| >While I am sure there is demand for such features, and while
| I am sure
| >such features can be used to create great effects, it still
| seems like
| >this is feature creep. Many of the effects achievable by the
| mechanisms
| >described in this section are also possible by careful use
| of <path>,
| >use of different markers, and existing options on the "fill" and 
| >"stroke" attributes.
| >
| >It would seem better to have the authoring tools effectively 
| >"prerender" the vector effects than to require that all the SVG user 
| >agents support an entire chapter's worth of additional features.
| 
| The solutions that you suggest were all reviewed and rejected because 
| they do not address the problems that vector effects are trying to 
| solve. There is a very strong demand for these features from the 
| mapping and schematics community. In short:
| 
| - there is a need to scale stroke outlines and stroke/fill patterns 
| differently from the rest of graphics
| - there is a need to assign multiple strokes and fills to an object 
| (drawing tools had this for long time)
| - there is a need to "set back" strokes around the markers while 
| preserving actual path data
| - there is a need to reuse edges in several shapes (esp. on maps)
| - all of the above should integrate with animation (e.g, path
| animation) and not cause substantial file size bloat.
| 
| Peter
| 
|

Received on Friday, 5 November 2004 21:53:45 UTC