Re: SVG 1.2 Comment: vector effects

* Ian Hickson wrote:
>I appreciate that there is a demand for these features, don't get me 
>wrong. My concern is that this demand isn't coming from Web authors. 
>Indeed, the demand from authors targetting the "quotidian Web" (for lack 
>of a better term) would be for open vector graphics of _any_ kind, since 
>all that such authors have right now is Flash. Authors who have enough 
>experience with SVG to be able to make feature requests almost be 
>definition aren't authors targetting the Web that Web browsers are 
>primarily concerned with.

What is exactly the definition of "vector graphics" you are using here?
I am not quite sure where you draw the line between graphical elements
authors create using CSS features such as the "border" property, vector
graphics that are pre-rasterized to some bitmap graphics file format
before they get published as part of a XHTML+CSS layout like for example
cliparts, type in a specific font or animated ads, interactive maps
where the map data is pre-rasterized to some bitmap graphics file format
and accessed via Java applets from browsers, interactive graphical
online games, interactive virtual reality environments, and so on.

Your definition of "web author" is also not clear to me, maybe you could
describe the characteristics of the people you mean more clearly? Are
these people HTML+CSS+JavaScript authors that attempt to turn Photoshop
graphics into a "web site" or is it more the set of people involved with
doing flash sites like http://www.unfortunateeventsmovie.com/ or are it
professional design companies that do stuff like corporate identities or
professional graphical user interface designers involved with doing the
user interface for desktop applications or computer games, or the people
who did the interactive SVG maps that visualize the results of the last
european election in germany, or whom did you have in mind?

Finally, it is not really clear to me where Shockwave Flash fits into
this picture. Have you or Mozilla or Opera complained about increasing
complexity in Shockwave Flash recently? It would seem you do not really
care much as Shockwave Flash is not implemented or currently considered
for implementation in those browsers as far as I can tell, and that this
functionality is rather offered by Macromedia as third party extension. 

As you apparently do care about the complexity of SVG 1.2 it would seem
that you do not consider it an option that SVG implementation will be
offered through the same mechanisms that make Shockwave Flash work today
which either means that you do not expect that anyone will implement SVG
1.2 to the extend required, or that there are specific reasons why these
mechanisms will not work well (probably in the longer term) for SVG
implementations and that the implementation work needs to be done by
these browser vendors. If that is not your point I am not sure how it is
actually relevant whether web browser vendors will implement SVG 1.2.

I think if you could elaborate on how you see the future of SVG and
Flash in web browsers (specifically on devices that allow rich
presentation) it would greatly help do understand your arguments.
-- 
Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjoern@hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
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Received on Monday, 29 November 2004 17:13:10 UTC