Re: [SVGMobile12] 5.8.1: interaction of conditional processing and use is unclear

At 03:09 PM 5/3/2005, L. David Baron wrote:
>Section 5.8.1 of SVG Tiny 1.2 contains the following sentence:
># Similar to the 'display' property, conditional processing attributes
># only affect the direct rendering of elements and do not prevent
># elements from being successfully referenced by other elements (such as
># via a 'use').
>
>It is clear from this that conditional processing attributes do not
>prevent an element from being referenced by a 'use' element (i.e., they
>do not make the reference invalid per [3]).  However, it is not clear
>what this sentence implies about the processing of the cloned
>non-exposed DOM tree attached to the 'use' element.  I see three
>possibilities:
>
>  1. The conditional processing attributes are processed on the
>     referenced element and all its descendants.
>
>  2. The conditional processing attributes are processed on the
>     descendants of the referenced element but not on the referenced
>     element itself.
>
>  3. The conditional processing attributes are not processed on the
>     referenced element nor any of its descendants.
>
>It should be clear in section 5.8.1 [1] or in section 5.6 [2] which of
>these is correct.  (I don't think (3) makes much sense, but it actually
>seems to me to be what the specification currently says.  The Adobe SVG
>plugin seems to implement (2).)

David,
Thanks for pointing out these ambiguities. Although the SVG WG needs to 
discuss this, it seems to be that (1) is the best way to go and the option 
which is most in line with the spirit of the rest of the language. I will 
argue that if ASV implements (2), then that would be a bug which is 
probably due to programmer oversight. (After all, why would you have <use> 
refer to an element which doesn't display?)

Jon


>-David
>
>[1] 
>http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-SVGMobile12-20050413/struct.html#ConditionalProcessingOverview
>[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-SVGMobile12-20050413/struct.html#UseElement
>[3] 
>http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-SVGMobile12-20050413/linking.html#HeadOverview
>
>--
>L. David Baron                                <URL: http://dbaron.org/ >
>           Technical Lead, Layout & CSS, The Mozilla Foundation

Received on Tuesday, 3 May 2005 23:28:34 UTC