Re: SVGT 1.2: Copy/Paste/Change

Hello www-svg,

Eric Seidel <eseidel@apple.com>
> I have a general question about the SVG 1.2 Tiny specification that I  
> hope one of you might be able to answer.
> 
> It has seemed to me, reading through the specification, that there is  
> a copy/paste/change theme throughout the SVG spec,

This is a resonable observation. There werw a number of causes of
this,and we have taken steps to correct them:

>  of XML Events (capture?),
We had understood from the HTML WG that they were producing an updated
version of XML Events which corrected some shortcomings of the current
one (lack of namespaced event support, some IDREFs where references to a
URI would be better). Following discussions withthem we had text in our
spec which we expected would migrate to theirs and in time be dropped
from ours. However, due to a dependency of DOM3 events and some
miscommunication, this ended up not happening on a timeframe that we
could still use the updated spec.

In consequence we have reverted to the older XML Events spec. We
continue to discuss with HTML WG the desirable changes in the nect
version.

> DOM3 (uDOM, as others have noted, is an incompatible subset),
The intention was always to produce a proper subset; the
incompatibilities have been found and fixed.

>  CSS (!important is an error, otherwise not officially  
> commented on),
!important is part of the CSS syntax. Its not an error in an external
style sheet or in a style element (though SVG Tiny has neither of
those). It is an error in an attribute value, which takes only the
actual property value and not assorted other CSS syntax like @-rules ,
CSS comments, etc.

>  SMIL (svg-only subset).
Looking at both SMIL Animation and at SMIL 2.1, you can see that these
specifications make specific requirements of what  host language must
additionally define. SVG, as a host language, defines those things. This
is all as expected.

>  This bothers me.  Mostly  
> because I see it creating a 300 page specification out of what might  
> otherwise might be a 100 page specification, and may cause potential  
> incompatibility problems for browser vendors attempting to implement  
> SVG Tiny 1.2 in a CDF environment.

The specific incompatibilities that were noted have been fixed. Some of
the cases which you attributed to the copy-past-change phenomenon were
not in fact instances of it.

We consider CDF and important use case, and are not intending to impede
it. Indeed, multi-namespace XML has for many years been an important SVG
use case in practice.

> Could someone offer some general comments on this observed phenomenon?



-- 
 Chris Lilley                    mailto:chris@w3.org
 Interaction Domain Leader
 Chair, W3C SVG Working Group
 W3C Graphics Activity Lead
 Co-Chair, W3C Hypertext CG

Received on Wednesday, 10 May 2006 10:48:37 UTC