- From: Kurt Cagle <kurt@kurtcagle.net>
- Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2004 16:11:53 -0800
- To: Robert O'Callahan <robert@ocallahan.org>, www-svg@w3.org
Robert O'Callahan wrote: > Kurt Cagle wrote: > >> Frankly, I agree with you -- there's a fair amount of interop that's >> going to need to be done to build a cohesive framework a la XAML. > > > You're not talking about interop. You're talking about throwing away > CSS and redoing all its features in SVG. > I'm talking about interop, but not CSS interop. I don't think that will happen, even if it does happen to be a good thing. CSS has a lot of utility in HTML, and has some (albeit less) utility with rendering straight XML. SVG does already incorporate many of the features of CSS already, because both are presentation layers that support container-oriented inheritance, though in many ways SVG is more full featured than CSS because the semantics sit at a lower level of abstraction. When I reference interop, I'm talking more along the lines of binding architectures (a la XForms), integration with XHTML, X3D (or its equivalent), XML Events and the like. > > I think you're completely wrong, and ignoring the benefits of > leveraging the huge installed based of CSS renderers, authors and > users. You're also advocating a major change in direction for the W3C. > Nevertheless, please repost your message to the www-svg mailing list. > It's important for everyone to know where everyone else stands. Frankly, I'm not advocating throwing away CSS. I'm just tired that all of the CSS people seem to be so dead-set on trying to impose a pre-XML standard with no pre-defined extensibility mechanism, no clean XML parsing capability, the requirements of a secondary renderer and so forth on SVG, simply for the sake of arguing about an installed base. Within the SVG domain, there IS NO installed CSS base, and any CSS renderers that exist will have to be rewritten for SVG anyway, regardless of what the final specifications end up looking like. To me its a lot like saying "Well we have this really cool toaster over here, and we need to roast turkey." Yes, the toaster does heat things up, but the prospect of slicing all that turkey up into bread shaped and sized pieces does not really appeal to me much. As to your comment about advocating a major change within the direction of the W3C, I'm more puzzled than anything about that. What radical change is that? The preference of using XML solutions to pre-XML solutions for solving problems? You may be right on that front, though the shift from DTDs to XSDs, from DOM manipulation to XSLT2, from HTML to XForms, from HTTP Post to SOAP all would tend to argue pretty strongly in the other direction, not to mention SVG itself. Perhaps you're talking about the tendency to create forward thinking specifications in response to studied changes in methodology and mindset rather than becoming reliant upon technologies that were produced initially (and quickly) to solve immediate problems with the lack of presentation layer in the initial HTML and the dangers of schisming. Maybe you're referring to the increasing sophistication of ontological formats with RDF and OWL as the space of relational knowledge management becomes more well known, rather than simple labelled flat bundles of properties, or the use of XPath as a property binding mechanism capable of dealing with multiple levels of document bidning and reasonably sophisticated transformation instead of the much more loosely bound and weaker CSS selectors specification. Forgive me my skepticism, but I see nothing in the current direction of the W3C that favors CSS; CSS works pretty well in HTML web pages, I'll grant you that, but by the very dint that it preceded XML by a few years means that it is NOT optimized for the XML world, and that is where even web pages and almost all user interface technologies are heading. Correct me if I'm wrong, but as a writer, developer, and evangelist of this technology, I DO try to keep on top of what's going on, and have since 1993. To me, CSS is a legacy application that needs to be supported for the next several years because there is already a reasonably large pre-existing base, but over time, it will fade in favor of some XML based standard. I don't necessarily see that standard being SVG -- there are aspects to presentation layers that have nothing to do with the mandate of SVG -- but it will be something XMLish (XBL, anyone?). -- Kurt Cagle
Received on Thursday, 18 November 2004 00:12:59 UTC