Re: Proposal: <star> element

On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 11:41 AM, Rik Cabanier <cabanier@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 10:59 AM, Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> Private discussion with Philip has convinced me that adding a <star>
>> element (or a <polar> element, or any other particular instance of
>> something that's star-like and possibly does more) is probably not
>> worth it.  Stars happen, but they're not really common.
>
> I thought so too, but searching for "SVG images" brings up a lot of artwork
> that uses stars (and triangles which are also stars)
> In addition, applications such as Illustrator and Inkscape offer them as
> primitives alongside circles and rectangles and it's easy to find js
> libraries that support them (ie http://paperjs.org/reference/path/).

I could be convinced by arguments like this, though the definition of
what a "star" is is obviously a bit loose (as evidenced by the
multiple substantially different attempts to provide them).

>> Plus, the
>> bearing command, which I think *does* justify itself, makes generating
>> stars fairly easy.
>
>
> I don't see much value in the bearing command. Do you have any examples of
> drawing applications or popular js libraries that offer this?
> It is also more invasive as it impacts the already complex path command
> string. See http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG2/paths.html#PathDataLinetoCommands for
> all the commands that are impacted.

The bearing command is useless for a drawing application.  It makes
hand-authoring far easier, particularly when performing some actions
that are symmetrical about some axis.  Rather than doing trig to
create a pentagon, you can just do some simple middle-school geometry:

<path d="h10 b108 h10 b108 h10 b108 h10 z">

~TJ

Received on Monday, 14 April 2014 18:48:46 UTC