RE: SVG Tiny 1.2 is now a Candidate Recommendation

Hi, Boris-

Thanks for your comment.

Boris Zbarsky wrote:
| 
| Robin Berjon wrote:
| > As someone who's been in the trenches of mobile 
| > SVG usage in the past few years, I can tell you it's not a 
| happy state 
| > of affairs.
| 
| Robin, thank you for the very clear explanation of the 
| current situation.  I guess the upshot is that the HTML 
| browser vendors do not in fact feel some of the time 
| and competitive pressures that you describe, and the 
| result is still that SVG Tiny 1.2 is the wrong process 
| for them to participate in -- it's targeted at a  
| completely different audience with completely 
| different needs, desires, and economic realities. 

I don't think that that's entirely accurate.  After all, Opera was one of
the companies that has worked very hard recently to get this spec out the
door, and they are one of the 4 major HTML browser vendors.

I think that the market is changing, such that the "mobile Web" and the
"desktop Web" will no longer be such a strict dichotomy.  And the Web has
always been about merging different platforms... PCs, Macs, mainframes, TVs
(think WebTV, with many millions of users... I used to work for a content
company that catered to them), and to a lesser degree mobile devices in the
past.  And the distinction between these platforms has always been blurry...
think about what a walled garden AOL (or CompuServe) used to be, in terms of
content.  Except for the screen size, phones now are much more powerful than
the first PCs that accessed the Web were... and how longer will it be before
people hook up their mobile devices to large monitors?

But you make a fair point.  At this current time, with market pressures on
desktop HTML UAs such as they are, some things may not seem relevant, or may
in fact seem negative.  All I can say is that it is in my best interest as
an author to have all UAs implement the spec as precisely as possible, and I
will continue to try to satisfy that goal.  I came to the SVG WG fairly
late, when there was already a good head of market and vendor steam behind
the current spec, but I did see serious efforts to make the spec as
compatible as possible with other techs as circumstances and history would
allow.


| Unfortunately, SVG Full 1.2 is planned to be based on SVG 
| Tiny 1.2, and various issues unresolved in SVG Tiny 1.2 
| due to the time constraints will have to be grandfathered 
| into SVG Full 1.2.
|
| The combination of all of which leads to the current unhappiness.

I would like to think that we can resolve these things going forward with
creative compromise and solid technical decisions, and I will fight for that
goal myself.

Regards-
Doug

Received on Monday, 14 August 2006 16:26:12 UTC