Masks and Images

Hi folks.

I'm new here, but I've been playing around with an SVG project for a 
while and I have a pair of questions-slash-feature requests...

(1) Currently, my SVG validates, except for the fact that I have 
"transform" attributes on "mask" elements.  I am told, "well, no 
problem, you can just put the transform on a group inside the mask," 
which is probably true, but if so, and thus if transforming everything 
in a mask is no problem, why isn't it allowed on the mask element itself 
in the first place?

(2) I can use <image> elements to include a raster image from anywhere 
in the web.  And I can set its "width" and "height" attributes (and its 
"x" and "y"), and then no matter *what* the original size of the image, 
it is always exactly the right size and in exactly the right place with 
respect to the current rendering of my SVG.  That is, if the width and 
height are 80 and the x and y are -40, the image will *always* be 
centered at (0,0) in my SVG's coordinate system, and will *always* take 
up an 80x80 rectangle in my current coordinates.

And yet I can't do that if the image I am including is another SVG.  
Because SVGs drag their own coordinate systems into the mix.  So in 
short, raster images are more easily *scaled* and dealt with in a 
*scale-independent* fashion than the supposedly scalable and 
scale-independent SVGs??  That somehow seems wrong.

I'm sure that there are Good and Proper reasons for the behavior of 
<image>-included SVGs, but in the interests of the scalability of what 
are supposed to be scalable images, It Would Be Nice If there were a way 
to include SVG images in a similar fashion to the scale-independence 
available to raster images.

Thanks for your attention,

~mark

Received on Monday, 10 March 2008 17:42:20 UTC