RE: Promoting more SVG attributes into properties

I noticed this thread a few days ago and wanted to put in my own (oft-expressed) two cents worth : namely that separation of semantics, behavior and presentation becomes a bit weird or artificial in many realms of human meaning. It was a rather cute concept when the triumvirate slogan was applied to hTml (emphasis on text) but when one starts to think about broader realms of human expression (of which text is but a weak shadow) it becomes brittle and doesn’t scale well.

 

It sounds as though you arrived at this perspective just fine without me having to wax philosophical about how silly HTML really was as an expressive medium meant to capture human thought.

 

Cheers

David

 

From: David Leunen [mailto:leunen.d@gmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 10:49 AM
To: Tab Atkins Jr.
Cc: www-svg
Subject: Re: Promoting more SVG attributes into properties

 

 

When SVG adopted CSS, they drew a
different line, decided that "geometry" was content and the rest was
style.  This leads to a weird disconnect when an author used to one
tries to use the other - they're used to being able to use CSS to do a
lot of painting-level things, like add decorations and border and what
have you, which in SVG stray into the "geometry" category.  Since many
more authors are HTML/CSS users, it makes sense to move closer to
their intuition.

 

So, that's exactly it : my definition of CSS is outdated :)

 

AFAIK,

the T in hTml means Text. 

the G in svG means Graphics.

and the first S in cSs means Style.

 

It seemed pretty clear to me.

 

I understand that some html+css authors think that css contains everything that is visual. But is it a reason to give up telling them it's more "everything that makes things beautiful" ?

Maybe some people don't get what "style" or "decoration" actually mean. Sure, some draw logos with empty <div>'s and CSS :)

But is it a reason to redefine the core purpose of css ?

As CSS has turned into just another syntax to define properties, you should rename it to CAP for Cascading Application of Properties. ;)

 

 

it means

that a robot can reasonably get the meaning of the document without

having to do much-more-difficult visual analysis. Under this

rationale, SVG's division doesn't make as much sense

 

Indeed, it is an accessibility problem. But think about other consumers than text indexing robots. 

I'm pretty sure that, without sight, it is definitely easier to understand the meaning of a vector picture than a raster.

For example, if I dream of a device capable of rendering a web page in braille, it is imaginable to draw the vector graphics into some sort of bas-relief.

But if you permit such things as <circle id="eye"/>, it means the "style sheets" cannot be ignored to understand the picture, and it should be parsed and interpreted only to read the few properties you are about to promote.

 

Accessibilities are some things difficult for us developers. Because we have to think about other ways than ours to access the data. And by definition these are hidden to us.

I have some colleague that still don't really understand why they should put alt attribute on their images, and they find it tiresome. But they do it, because the spec says so.

 

So don't give up on all your ideals. Be brave, and create clean specs despite the ill-informed complaints ! 

:)