Re: Making it possible to use an <svg> root in text/html

Robin Berjon wrote the following on 3/5/2009 8:51 PM:
> On Mar 5, 2009, at 09:25 , Henri Sivonen wrote:
>> I don't have an informed opinion yet on whether enabling <svg> as 
>> root in text/html is a good idea.
>
> Scratching my head a little, I see no good reason not to allow it. In 
> fact, I think it would be a very good idea if we can work around some 
> of the few kinks.
>
As someone who uses a text editor to write SVG in XHTML+MathMl+SVG, I am 
somewhat unclear on the use case for an <svg> root. Maybe I am confused, 
but someone wants to start a document something like <!DOCTYPE svg> 
followed by SVG elements with some HTML elements embedded in amongst the 
SVG? There is a reason to do this? A reason that simply using XHTML will 
not work? Sure, a couple extra characters at the top of the file, but 
nothing too heavy:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">
<head>

I no longer use a <?xml encoding... piece as the browsers I use do not 
seem to need that line.

Even when the page is dominantly an SVG graphic with a hunk of XHTML 
code inserted as a foreignObject, 
http://www.comfsm.fm/~dleeling/kinesiology/runshine.xhtml, I still do 
not see that the savings starting off in <svg>.

Besides, theoretically one could take the svg code along with the XHTML 
foreignObject "island" out of that file, save as an svg, and render with 
the XHTML as a foreignObject, no? I tried this and it worked, provided I 
used an .xml ending: 
http://www.comfsm.fm/~dleeling/tech/runshine-svg.xml (I do not control 
the HTTP on the server, so to render .svg I would have to add back in 
the <?xml... and <!DOCTYPE... lines. )

So what is the reason for wanting to be able serve this as text/html? 
Sorry, I am easily confused.

Bear in mind I am using FireFox 3.1B2, if that makes a difference.

>> Forming an informed opinion would require research about existing 
>> content and further discussion on what slippery slopes there'd be
>
> It would make some amount of broken content that is accepted by some 
> implementations conformant. Based on my prior investigations into this 
> (admittedly outdated by now) this wouldn't break anything.
>
>> (such as the slippery slope of making <?xml encoding="..."?> set the 
>> encoding in text/html which could easily break existing content and 
>> which would be implementation-wise an annoying addition to the 
>> already too crazy encoding information situation with text/html).
>
> If the XML declaration doesn't set the encoding for (X)HTML served as 
> text/html, it certainly shouldn't for SVG. The same processing rules 
> should apply, based on the media type. That, of course, would be 
> entirely different in XSVG.
>

-- 

Dana Lee Ling
Professor
College of Micronesia-FSM/National site
http://www.comfsm.fm/~dleeling/ <http://www.comfsm.fm/%7Edleeling/>

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Received on Friday, 6 March 2009 06:05:02 UTC