RE: SVG Feedback on HTML5 SVG Proposal

Quoting Doug Schepers, 
> * The SVG WG requests that minimized and unquoted attribute values raise parse
> errors when found on SVG elements. Rationale:
>  1. Consistent with making incorrect xmlns attributes generate parse error.
>  2. Minimizing the number of documents which are conforming HTML whose SVG
> fragments when copied to "image/svg+xml" are non-wellformed.

Ian Hickson wrote:
"This seems reasonable; what do other people think about this? (There have 
been requests that we make SVG-in-HTML support HTML-like attribute syntax.)"

If I understand the question, it is something like this: the following snippet
 
<html>
<head><title /></head>
<body>
<svg>
<g>
<rect id=x x=10 fill=red width=10 height="50" >
</g>
</rect>
</html></body>
 
might be legit HTML and therefore, the SVG parser in the browser would make sense out of the mismatched tags and the unquoted attribute values.
 
Then if someone posts that snippet of code on web pages and authors start trying to use it in their cell phones, then cell phone makers are going to have to build full-fledged HTML parsers into their little hand held boxes to accommodate all the wild code, and that defeats the value of SVG-Tiny.
 
?? Is that the question??
 
If so, then I guess that dealing with Cartesian coordinates in the x,y plane (the core concepts of SVG in a sense) is already complex enough that requiring folks to nest parentheses properly is not too much to ask if it allows the parser to run inside my fingernail polish (NailsThatSMIL -- TM), or other tiny and useful device.
 
I don't think too many SVG authors (present or future) are going to be too resentful of the idea of having to write XML-like stuff . Likewise for MathML -- how many mathematicians are likely to unbalance their parentheses? Maybe the old ones do, but they've already moved out of algebraic topology and settled into graph theory. 
 
If it doesn't break HTML, then it seems to me it'd be good to keep SVG strict, at least until programmable matter becomes cheap (then we'll have Crays in our fingernail polish right?).
 
David

Received on Wednesday, 11 March 2009 01:34:39 UTC