Re: SVG 1.2 Comment: vector effects

On Wed, 24 Nov 2004, Dean Jackson wrote:
> 
> At this point in the long thread, I'm not sure what the best way to 
> proceed is.
> 
> Ian is the main person opposed to the current model and syntax. I don't 
> see many other people on his side raising new data (Boris sent in a 
> grammatical comment for example).

There isn't much "new data" to raise. (Several people have told me that 
they agree it is complicated but didn't feel they had anything to add and 
so didn't send any comments on the matter.) The model is IMHO excessively 
complicated for a spec aimed at use on the Web.

The current vectorEffect language would actually be pretty good if it was 
a vector language in itself, without the rest of SVG. It can do a lot, 
it's very powerful. On its own, it's pretty simple and easy to understand. 
But when you add to it the entirety of the rest of SVG it's just too much.


> On the other hand we have at least three implementers (Adobe, Apache and 
> Canon), a number of domain specialists (from GIS and graphics 
> backgrounds) and SVG content developers supporting the existing model 
> and syntax.

I agree that many parts of SVG 1.2 would be very useful for experts in 
specialist domains. If that's the target audience for SVG 1.2 then that's 
fine, but it should say so, and Web browser manufacturers could relax and 
ignore SVG 1.2. On the other hand if the target audience of SVG 1.2 is the 
popular Web, then features like vectorEffect and the various other areas I 
mentioned as too complex should just be dropped or dramatically simplified 
to address only the critical issues missing from SVG 1.1. (Ideally, this 
effort would be done in parallel with massive simplification of SVG 1.1 
itself, which is sadly also a very complicated spec.)

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Monday, 29 November 2004 05:16:03 UTC