Re: Why a stroke on top of a fill?

Doug Schepers wrote:
> Hi, Folks-
>
> As I understand it, this treatment of stoke-over-fill and 
> inner-and-outer stroke is a pretty standard convention.  It's 
> certainly the way that Adobe Illustrator handles stroke and fill, 
> which is why (I believe) SVG does it that way.  But when it comes down 
> to it, it is an arbitrary decision... they had to specify one 
> particular behavior.
>
> That said, we recognize that content authors may wish to have some 
> different options, which is why we are specifying Vector Effects... to 
> allow fine-grained control over the appearance.
>
> A couple more comments inline...
>
> Jasper van de Gronde wrote (on 6/5/10 4:15 AM):
>> Why not take it to the SVG mailing list directly? (Note that I've taken
>> the liberty to change the subject.) My guess would be that SVG does it
>> for simplicity, but I'm definitely not sure.
>>
>> Bryan Hoyt | Brush Technology wrote:
>>> That particular oddity has annoyed me a few times. I for one like your
>>> way much better, Juan. But I guess I'd be in favour of sticking with
>>> the standards if the standards people have no room for movement.
>>> Usually safest ;-)
>
> It is absolutely too late to change SVG to have different behavior 
> here, even if everyone agreed that this should be the expected 
> behavior.  With the new options through Vector Effects, I think we can 
> meet all the use cases.  Authoring tools could then choose which 
> behavior to have as a default, depending on what makes sense for the 
> anticipated users.
>
>
>>> There's a related oddity in Inkscape's rendering (and probably the
>>> standards), the fact that the border is drawn so that it overlaps the
>>> fill rather than surrounding it. To be honest, the idea of the stroke
>>> surrounding the fill (non-overlapping) makes a lot more intuitive
>>> sense to me, especially when you've got thick and/or translucent
>>> strokes like Juan's example.
>
> There are ways in SVG 1.1 to get the different effects you're 
> describing, based on combining properties.  If you set the 
> 'fill-opacity' and 'stroke-opacity' separately, they are composited 
> together *after* the opacity is applied, but if you set them 
> simultaneously with the 'opacity' property, they are composited 
> together *before* the opacity is applied, so they will be treated as a 
> single graphic primitive (i.e. there won't be any fill visible through 
> the stroke).  You can see this in the example file I threw together [1].
>
>
>>> Is somebody able to explain why the overlapping method is used, either
>>> for intuitive reasons or technical reasons? Or is it just an arbitrary
>>> choice by those who write the standards?
>
> As mentioned, it's an arbitrary (but logical) choice, based on 
> pre-existing implementations of vector graphics.
>
>
>>> Bryan Hoyt, /Web Development Manager/ -- Brush Technology
>>> *Ph:* +64 3 942 7833 *Mobile:* +64 21 238 7955
>>> *Web:* brush.co.nz <http://brush.co.nz/>
>>> On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 01:48, Juan Vuletich <juan@jvuletich.org
>>> <mailto:juan@jvuletich.org>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Folks,
>>>
>>> Inkscape and other SVG renderes draw shapes by drawing first the fill,
>>> and then drawing the border on top. As Ivan noted recently (in ""), at
>>> http://dev.w3.org/SVG/modules/vectoreffects/master/SVGVectorEffectsPrimer.html 
>>>
>>>
>>> and http://www.w3.org/TR/SVGTiny12/render.html#PaintingShapesAndText ,
>>> it is clear that the standard requests to do that.
>>>
>>> I didn't know that, and took the time to render this svg:
>>> http://www.jvuletich.org/Morphic3/rects.svg like this:
>>> http://www.jvuletich.org/Morphic3/rectsInM3.png . It is a bit more
>>> complicated, but I feel it is better.
>>>
>>> What do you think? Should I simplify my code and just draw one over the
>>> other? Or should the standard be changed, and Inkscape and other
>>> renderers do what I did?
>
> I strongly suggest you not exhibit non-standard behavior.  That's what 
> standards are for... so content authors can rely on predictable 
> behavior across implementations.
>
>
> [1] http://schepers.cc/svg/opacity-tests.svg
>
> Regards-
> -Doug Schepers
> W3C Team Contact, SVG and WebApps WGs

Thank you very much for your comments.

Cheers,
Juan Vuletich

Received on Sunday, 6 June 2010 20:58:28 UTC