RE: Request for Future Feature: Star Element

Hi, Robin-

| Doug Schepers wrote:
| > But ignore that, I came up with a better one! It would 
| allow users to 
| > create a wide variety of regular polygons and stars, using 
| 2 radii and 
| > the number of points in the polygon. It would be very simple for 
| > implementors to do
| 
| One of the driving ideas motivating the creation of sXBL was 
| precisely so that the great and wonderful community could 
| create its own extensions to SVG without having to go through 
| the WG, and without the implementors complaining that the 
| spec is getting huge and out of hand.

I don't think it's out of hand to add new graphical features, especially
when they are so simple to implement. I think most of the complaints were
about difficult features like filters, or about non-graphical things like
network protocols.


| Interestingly enough one of the first sXBL examples (back 
| when it was called RAX or RCC) that Adobe showcased was 
| precisely a start element.
| 
| Is there any reason why sXBL couldn't be used here? You'll 
| get it before you get SVG 1.3 :)

Yes, I discuss it on the page I referenced. sXBL *might* allow you to
preserve the semantics of a star/regular polygon, if it were a geometric
language that were being represented, but it makes no sense to me to add a
layer of geometry and script just to achieve an effect in what is a
geometric language, SVG... And those semantics (for screen readers, image
indexers, and other SemWeb thingies) would only be available if the
arbitrary language were well-defined and well-known as a standard.  

Second, a wide variety of SMIL animation effects that could be achieved with
this element (animating the number of points, the radii, etc.) would be nigh
impossible without a boatload of script to do the animations, which defeats
the purpose of having SMIL animation.  

Regards-
Doug

doug . schepers  @ vectoreal.com
www.vectoreal.com ...for scalable solutions.

Received on Wednesday, 24 August 2005 23:36:10 UTC