RE: Proposal: Nesting SVG Graphics Elements

Steve Schafer wrote:
It seems to me that you're trying to embed what is more properly handled as
SVG editor functionality into the base language. My personal preference
would be to keep the SVG representation itself as "lean and mean" as
possible, and put all of the interactive manipulation expressiveness into a
higher layer.

Later Dirk (Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2012 8:42 PM) sorta chimed in with
a similar perspective.

As some of you might guess, I'm rather at the opposite end of the spectrum.
I think things like pan and zoom controls should be built into the spec so
that each author doesn't have to hand roll her own bad user interface. I
think that as a graphical language we should have a <drawingtablet>
analogous to the <textarea> for HTML. HTML is about text (though it does it
rather poorly -- since most artsy text is rendered as bitmaps -- in
violation of morality, aesthetics and law) but at least they have the basic
MacWrite editor built in to the textarea. Analogously SVG should have a
simple MacDraw built in to a <drawingtablet> so that not everyone has to
build their own bad web-based drawing program. I love SVGEdit but its
Bezier curve tool isn't like any of the 20 programs I've used since 1986 or
1988 when Illustrator first came out. Pan and zoom being completely
different in every browser!?!! Really, is this what the first two W's in WWW
mean? Ted Nelson* (didn't he invent the web?) must be groaning!

Doug and Tab are being rather moderate in supporting such a proposal, but we
can forgive them certain indiscretions since they are young.

I think at the core of the debate is what sort of a thing we want SVG to be.
I believe it should maximize productivity per unit of effort.  Doug's
concept advances that criterion though not nearly so effectively as
<replicate> (especially with <random>). 2018 -- is that the year we're
giving even odds to as to when <replicate>'s opponents finally succumb to
senility? 

Cheers
David

*Ted is quite a fascinating fellow if you ever get the chance to meet him.

Received on Friday, 30 November 2012 02:37:59 UTC