Re: Reconsider SVG 1.2

On Wednesday, November 17, 2004, 12:58:00 AM, Ronan wrote:


RO> Anyhow, if I had to choose between svg and css, I'd elect to have css bumped.
RO> It's a redundant, non-xml vocabulary that brings little to me except
RO> implementation headaches.

RO> Not only do I have to support XML and scripting, but I also have to have
RO> another parser for css... I find that cool, but pointless. Whoever came up
RO> with the idea of adding css to svg should be forced to implement it in a
RO> browser themeselves.

That would be me. Its a decision I am starting to regret. Some years
ago, CSS was supposed to be the way to style random XML markup to give
you something to look at, and XLink was supposed to be the way to add
links to it. That was supposed to get a functional web page using
appropriate markup for the given problem domain.

In practice, CSS is moribund - it was chartered in 1998 to develop CSS3
which shows no sign of being completed in, say, 2 years; it still has
the weird non-XML syntax making it hard to generate or consume with XML
tools and, most worrying of all, apparently the CSS WG (or some vocal
spokespeople for it) believe that CSS should not be used with random XML
at all - only HTML should be used. The WG seems to be revising CSS2,
apparently replacing it with the cut-down and rewritten CSS 2.1, which
might one day get a test suite. CSS 1 has a test suite, so CSS 2.1 has
at least that, but where are the tests for the parts beyond CSS1?

So yeah, I am coming to regret that decision. Mea culpa, mea maxima
culpa.



-- 
 Chris Lilley                    mailto:chris@w3.org
 Chair, W3C SVG Working Group
 Member, W3C Technical Architecture Group

Received on Thursday, 18 November 2004 18:25:05 UTC