Re: Reconsider SVG 1.2

Kurt Cagle wrote:
> The test suite issue is a good one, but given the fairly limited scope
 > of the changes in SVG 1.2 I don't necessarily see the construction of such
 > a suite being a particular hardship

Note that SVG 1.2 includes all of SVG 1.1 by reference, and SVG 1.1 does not 
have a reasonable test suite...

> thus is it not necessary to replicate the ENTIRE SVG test suite

Unfortunately, it's necessary to vastly expand the existing test suite, if 
reasonable test coverage is to be achieved.

>> Note that I found out just yesterday that the Adobe viewer's 
>> implementation of the CSS cascade and of SVG stylistic attributes and 
>> their place in said cascade is completely broken.

> The CSS implementation within Adobe's viewer actually works reasonably 
> well -- I've written a book on it "SVG Programming" for Apress, and used 
> CSS pretty heavily in it. ASV 3.0 is not perfect in this regard, but to 
> describe it as "completely broken" is something of an overstatement.

The text you quote says that the placement of stylistic attributes in the CSS 
cascade is broken, not that "the CSS implementation is broken".  I'm not sure 
why you're replying to claims that were not made.

>> #2 is the heart of the arguments about whether the text-flow in SVG is 
>> compatible with the text-flow in CSS.

> The CSS flow model has no real notion of non-rectangular 
> flow, and saying that a future CSS implementation MIGHT eventually have 
> one strikes me as being specious.

The complaints have been about inconsistency with _existing_ CSS specifications 
and implementations.

> As Ronan so elegantly put it, SVG could very well exist without CSS

As long as you stick to an SVG-only world, of course.  Some of us would like to 
be able to use SVG in other contexts too, instead of coming up with something 
that's sort of like SVG and using it instead....

>> The problem is finding people to do the programming.  There's a 
>> chronic shortage.
> 
> Make something compelling enough, and you can get the people to program 
> it. The Mozilla team is ramping up its SVG support

I can tell you for a fact that there is a chronic shortage of people working on 
SVG in Mozilla.

> Most of the principle objections that I've seen from people on SVG 1.2 
> have to do with its "potential" collision with a currently unpublished 
> working draft of CSS dealing with text flow.

No.  The text flow objections are about a concrete collision with the CSS2.0/2.1 
box model.  They are not exactly "potential", and the specification has been 
published for years.

-Boris

Received on Wednesday, 17 November 2004 18:02:35 UTC