Re: handling XLink deprecation

Tab Atkins Jr.:

>Just make all of SVG use the same attribute.  The only reason to ever
>have more than one name is if a single element needs to specify two
>urls, and that kind of thing is special enough that it's okay to
>special-case it.

This is already the case for attributes now with 'XLink:href'.
If a simplification is really necessary (I don't think it is), one can
introduce 'SVG:href' as an alternative for all of them.
Some other attributes of XLink provide already the option for
more than one IRI, but the RDFa approach, available already
in SVG tiny 1.2, provides a more general approach for this
anyway for most use cases.

Because CSS is another language construct, it cannot be a
surprise, that it references IRIs in different ways.
However if it appears in presentation attributes, one could
simplify this as well using the same  'SVG:href' as alternative.
Typically/often authors will not use external stylesheets
for SVG documents anyway, therefore this could simplify
already most use cases, respectively they are not meaningful
at all for documents using the tiny profile ;o)

More interesting than 'XLink:href' is maybe 'XLink:title', this
one is really used by authors and SVG still has not element
for a tooltip - if usage of XLink will be deprecated in SVG2 is
is even more urged to define such an element - because
currently authors either use 'XLink:title' for this or they have
the tendency to abuse the title element for this due to a
wrong implementation of this element in several viewers.
If there is a real tooltip element, the motivation to fix this bug
in viewers and documents could be much better ;o)

In SVG tiny 1.2 one can already use something like this
<metadata about="#button" role="aria:tooltip" property="aria:tooltip"
  content="click or activate to start animation" />
but obviously, because most browsers still do not interprete
new features of SVG tiny 1.2, this will not really work in practice ...

Therefore I suggest to define a tooltip element at the same
time, XLink will get deprecated.
Obviously this does not replace the need for role and the
RDFa attributes in SVG2 as available already in SVG tiny 1.2 ;o)

Olaf

Received on Wednesday, 22 August 2012 08:54:13 UTC