Re: 3rd Call: HowTo make a 100% sheet with a hole in it that reveals a link

> Olaf,
>
> I am grateful for your many attempts to understand the issues I raise.
> your solution also appears excellent, though the method isn't clear
> to me directly**.

Well the idea is very generic and not much related to SVG.
A hole is nothing with something around it, not necessarily
some substance that was removed from something (as 
with clip or mask).
Now how to do it? First you need a huge 'something'
this is a path fragment like
M-10000 -10000v20000h20000v-20000z
This is a very large rectangled shape, much bigger
as the viewBox you want to use.
If you add another 'small' path fragment, for
example 
M-100 -100h200v200h-200z
you get something with a hole:
d="
M-10000 -10000v20000h20000v-20000z
M-100 -100h200v200h-200z"

Here either you reverse the painting direction as in
this case or you can use fill-rule="evenodd" to define,
what is inside and what is outside.
Doing this, the hole is simply everything outside the
shape. Anyway from a philosophical or mathematical
point of view, it is always a question of defintion, what
is inside and what outside. In SVG this is defined by
the fill-rule. Even if one does not understand really,
how this is done, I think, the fill-rule works almost
intuitively, especially with fill-rule="evenodd".

It is in general not really necessary to have two
separated path fragments to get a hole, This is
possible too, if one path crosses itself somewhere,
especially if it is a closed path.


>
> my concern is whether a child can use SVG authoring tools, unaided.
> Tuxpaint, iSketch, msPaint and very many other tools already provide
> this facility for raster painting.

Ok, thats another interesting thing. 
But comparing my problems with graphical environment programs
with pull down menues and mysterious symbols with the strategies of my
young nephews I'm quite optimistic, that they are able to use 
them by trial and error more effectively than me after one or two
hours ;o)

>
> A child who can use scissors and paper, and understands the GUI icons
> and method used to represent this process.
> A child has much experience of stretchy substances, and does not
> require to understand percentage values.

Yes, that is true. With most current computers they only have a
keyboard and a pointing device. And even with this limited tools it is
already nice, what one can create using such programs with GUIs
just dragging around points and adding or removing points and
control points, joining paths together etc without knowing anything
about the mathematics behind it. 


>
> similarly someone not versed in SVG can understand much by reviewing
> code samples.
> however, the representation of holes in an SVG document is perhaps
> more complex than strictly necessary.
>

Not sure, the first step is to understand, what a hole is - nothing - 
then it is quite clear, that you have to care more about the 
question, what is around the nothing to give it more substance.
You cannot change the fact, that the hole is nothing, but you 
can add other things to pronounce this ;o)
Methods using clip or mask 'cut' into something to remove 
parts of it to create a hole, this is somehow a much more
complex process as just to avoid to put something in a place,
where you do not want to have it ;o)



> the reality that output is frequently accurate to 12 significant
> figures, where 3 or maybe 5 would be sufficient, greatly hinders
> ready comprehension.

Well as you can see, I need only one path (in the example
the yellow path) to create an object with a hole. 
And this is possible too with programs like Inkscape.
You need a minimum of two separated path fragments 
(two M/m commands) or a crossing of the path with itself.

>
> It's my contention that to define and create such an authoring tool,
> an SVG specification has to be designed with this in mind.
> The evidence being that there isn't such a tool after a decade.
>

I know Inkscape a little bit (mostly using potrace to convert raster
images to SVG), and this is already a very nice tool. And there 
are other commercial programs with SVG export. Most of them
are designed for several formats, not just one. 

But I agreee because the intellectual capacities of specification 
authors, implementors, programmers and document authors 
are limited, there are unsolved problems related to all of them.
I think, it would be a bad idea to reduce the possibilities of a
language to the intersection of all these capacities. 
Then a lot of useful things are excluded, because someone
is not able to understand them. In the worst case you get
as an intersection an empty set and no one can express anything ;o)

> regards
>
> Jonathan Chetwynd
> Accessibility Consultant on Media Literacy and the Internet
>
> **would a reduced testcase similar to Jeff's help clarify your method?

See attachment and explanation above and inside the sample. 
The green rectangle with a link is at the bottom. 
If the viewer supports animateMotion, you have to hurry to activate the 
link related to the green rectangle while parts of it are not covered by 
the yellow filled and dark blue stroked path. And note what happens,
if the fill-rule is switched by the animate element.
Could be expanded to a simple declarative game for children or
pensioniers or bored mobile phone owners -
'grab the green rectangle if you can' ;o)

The other samples are complicated with the need of a circular shape.
This results in either the full profile A/a commands or some numeric
calculated cubic bezier curves. This is avoided with the simple paths in 
this sample.