Re: SVG12: version attribute

Dear Björn Höhrmann,

Bjoern Hoehrmann wrote:
>   In http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-SVGMobile12-20050413/struct.html the
> version attribute of the 'svg' element is defined as follows:
> 
> [...]
>   Indicates the SVG language version to which this document fragment
>   conforms.
> 
>   In SVG 1.0 and SVG 1.1 this attribute had to the value "1.0" or
>   "1.1" respectively. For SVG 1.2, the attribute should have the
>   value "1.2".
> [...]
> 
> This makes no sense, if the attribute does not have the value "1.2"
> the document fragment is not a SVG Tiny 1.2 document in which case
> the requirement does not apply. The schema fragment further suggests
> that the attribute is optional which makes no sense for the same
> reason. Worse, the schema defines a default value of "1.1" which is
> inappropriate for SVG Tiny 1.2 and contradicts that the attribute is
> optional. Please change the draft to clearly state that the version
> attribute is mandatory with "1.2" beeing the only possible canonical
> value for the 'svg' element.

It is a goal of SVG Tiny 1.2 that all SVG Tiny 1.1 documents would be 
conforming 1.2 documents as well. Since the Tiny 1.1 had the version 
attribute optional and set to 1.1, it version cannot be made mandatory 
(and the fact that it has a default value does not make it non-optimal 
but rather always-specified).

An SVG Tiny 1.2 document is conformant so long as it follows the rules 
laid down in the conformance section. This includes previous versions as 
well as other profiles, so long as they do not make use of features not 
defined in SVG Tiny 1.2.

The purpose of the version attribute is defined in appendix C.4:

"""
The attributes 'version', 'baseProfile', 'requiredFeatures' and 
'requiredExtensions' identify the minimal functional requirements of an 
SVG  user agent in order to render the content successfully. If these 
attributes  identify a version, a profile, features or extensions, and 
the features are  not supported by the user agent, then the user agent 
should alert or  otherwise notify the user that the version of the file 
is not supported and  suggest an alternate processing option (e.g., 
installing an updated version  of the user agent) if such an option exists.
"""

Thank you for you comment,

-- 
Robin Berjon
   Senior Research Scientist
   Expway, http://expway.com/

Received on Monday, 13 June 2005 16:39:08 UTC