Re: [SVGMobile12] Resolution of issue SVGT12-487 not satisfactory

On Aug 2, 2006, at 5:19 PM, Chris Lilley wrote:

>> As I had understood, the plan was to work on resolving said
>> incompatibility,
>
> The specification says that the target attribute meanings are from
> WebCGM, which is a W3C Recommendation. SVG WG has checked with  
> WebCGM WG
> that the meanings are consistent between the two specifications. We
> also asked WebCGM to check actual implementations; they did so and  
> confirmed
> that the definitions in the spec are the same as what actual running
> code does. Thus, there is no incompatibility between what the spec  
> says
> and what actually happens.
>
> The SVG spec makes no claim that the target attribute has the same
> meanings as HTML. It does claim that its the same as WebCGM.

Sorry if this is an overly obvious remark, but compatibility with  
HTML is much, much more useful than compatibility with WebCGM. Reasons:

* Much greater installed base of HTML UAs.
* Much greater amount of existing HTML content (by many orders of  
magnitude).

I make the above two claims based on the fact that I don't know where  
to find a single piece of WebCGM content, or if I did, how I would  
display it on my system. I do not think this is specific to me, but  
it could just be personal ignorance. Conversely, it is hard to find a  
computing device these days that cannot display HTML.

Additionally:

* XHTML and SVG can be combined in the same document (CDI), making it  
more problematic if similar features between the two have different  
semantics. But WebCGM is not an XML application, content will not be  
freely mixed in the same document, so the behavior difference is less  
likely to cause immediate confusion.

Again, apologies for stating the blazingly obvious; perhaps the SVG  
WG has some unstated rationale for why compatibility with WebCGM is  
more important than compatibility with HTML.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Thursday, 3 August 2006 08:27:40 UTC