Re: SVGAccessibilityWG: has-been-clicked or a:visited

David Woolley wrote:
 > [alt]
 >> It doesn't make much sense in SVG where the images are part of the
 >> document, so are not likely to be absent or not displayed. Of course,
 >
 > I think there is a real danger that SVG will be used for the whole
 > document.  Most commercial web pages already strive to use HTML as
 > a page description language.

I am not sure to fully understand your comment or if it really fits to 
my prose...

But I think I agree with what I understood:
Basically, SVG is meant to describe/define graphics with more or less 
textual content (from nothing (pure graphics) to lot of text 
(diagrams)). That's what I call document, ie. the SVG image itself.

I saw a demo SVG showing off a long text formatted in columns. This is 
fine as demo, but as Ian would rant, this is an abuse of the format, as 
such use would much more fit to HTML+CSS... I believe that SVG should be 
used either as standalone image/application (sorry Ian ;-) with sparce 
text, or inside an HTML document, as complementary image, not as main 
document.

It is a problem a bit like using Flash to make full Web sites. There are 
several pages on the Web ranting against this use, its lack of 
accessibility, of bookmarking capability, etc.

Some Web sites I saw, fully made in SVG, suffer less of this problem, 
partly because text is text, not graphics, partly because links are 
links, going to a separate SVG file, partly because they are mostly show 
off (see what I can do) or with content mainly made of graphics (Peepo), 
hence the fitting with the SVG paradigm (?).

But obviously, if you have a lot of things to express in textual 
fashion, HTML+CSS+SVG is the best way to go.
The problem is with authors, which are quick to "pervert" provided tools 
into unexpected ways.

That's why SVG 1.2 goes into ways Ian despise: text formatting, widgets 
for applications, etc. Because authors are already stretching SVG 1.1 
into these uses, but since it doesn't fit well to these uses, it mades 
poor results. By providing official support of these practices, at least 
it can / may add some standardization, accessibility, better use, clean 
practice. Perhaps this should go with some recommendations / guidelines 
how to avoid abuses of the format. Necessarily generic/partial, as 
author imagination is always richer than anything we can expect/anticipate.

-- 
Philippe Lhoste
--  (near) Paris -- France
--  Professional programmer and amateur artist
--  http://Phi.Lho.free.fr
--  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --

Received on Wednesday, 10 November 2004 09:05:57 UTC