Selecting text in a clipPath: accessibility and advice to search engines

You good folks have probably already considered these issues, but I’m a bit
naïve.

 

Consider the two examples at 

http://srufaculty.sru.edu/david.dailey/svg/text/belize.svg and

http://srufaculty.sru.edu/david.dailey/svg/text/belize2.svg .

 

(Incidentally, there are browser oddities associated with these examples *,
though Opera and IE9 come close to doing what I intended.)

 

In the first example, a pattern containing a bitmap is applied to a text
string. In the second, a clipPath containing the text is applied to the
image.

 

The first has the advantage that the text remains selectable by dragging
over it (so that it can be copied to the clipboard), but the second doesn’t.
(It also has the advantage of being able to stroke the text.)

 

Should text in a clipPath be selectable?

 

Should SVG attempt to instruct search engines how to do their business: like
having a non-normative section called “advice to search engines (and
authors)” that might recommend places within an SVG document from which
semantic content might emanate? I suspect the search folks don’t wish to
have a standards committee touch them in such a way, but on the other hand
they might welcome the advice of those who have thought about it more
deeply.

 

Cheers

David

 

*  Safari and Chrome (Windows 7) both screw up the pattern and in ways quite
different from one another. IE9 has oddities associated with clicking and
dragging : the pattern shifts on mousedown, for example.  Chrome doesn’t
render the clipPath, and Safari does it but with an atrocious bitmapped
version of the font. FF behaves itself properly but for the textLength
property and the inability to select text).