Re: Reconsider SVG 1.2

Jon Ferraiolo wrote:

>My personal opinion is that:
>
>1) It was a mistake for SVG 1.0 (with the emphasis on "1.0") to support CSS 
>at all, even on an optional basis. Virtually no real-life SVG content uses 
>CSS today. (As you point out, CSS is an optional feature in SVG, and the 
>Tiny profile does not allow it at all.)
>
>2) However, we should leave CSS support in SVG, at least for now (i.e., SVG 
>1.2), because it might prove advantageous to the W3C within its Compound 
>Document (CDWG) activity (just recently started). One of the goals of the 
>Compound Document activity is to allow intermixing of different 
>presentation namespaces within the same file (XHTML, SVG, XForms to name 
>three) and to define the detailed processing model when this occurs. Since 
>CSS is a necessity if you want to define the presentation of XHTML, 
>therefore it is critical to define what happens to the SVG elements in the 
>presence of CSS. It might help that the SVG working group already figured 
>out how the cascade works in SVG and which properties from CSS apply to SVG 
>elements.
>
Developing a set of specifications independently, freezing them, and 
then handing them off to the CDWG to figure out how to make them work 
together without breaking anything seems like a rather tall order for 
the CDWG. But I guess we're stuck with it.

Given that, and the fact that most SVG authors and implementors seem to 
prefer to live in an SVG-only world and are unhappy about making 
compromises to play well with other worlds, perhaps SVG 1.2 should 
proceed with an attached proviso that it is not suitable for mixed 
documents and a promise that a different, and incompatible, SVG variant 
will be developed (by the CDWG, perhaps) for use in mixed documents.

Rob

-- 
Robert O'Callahan <robert@ocallahan.org>
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God. ... The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We
have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the
Father, full of grace and truth." 1 John 1:1,14

Received on Wednesday, 17 November 2004 16:58:39 UTC