Re: SVG pagination

Hello Amelia, Julien,

Wouldn't it be easier to just create a  group with a <use> with an  
xlink:href to an external .svg  file and a small script to print the group  
ID of each use object at the bottom of the viewport/page? Adding an object  
with an opacity of 0.01 on the left and right to move a page up or down by  
setting display of the current group to none and show the next or previous  
group. That way you can easily put in whatever object into a predefined  
page size and brows through it. A reactive object at the top could be used  
as index and even display thumbnails of pages if desired.

But granted, a more formal way of having multipage documents in SVG would  
be great instead of having to find such workarounds. Having to create the  
page numbering manually is quite a drag for starters and it feels like  
something really easy to implement.

Cheers,

Jelle Mulder

On Fri, 31 Oct 2014 02:28:17 +0800, Amelia Bellamy-Royds  
<amelia.bellamy.royds@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Julien,
>
> I've been thinking about a solution to your problem, but didn't want to  
> reply until I had a proof-of-concept demo working!
>
> There is no native way to define page (or column/region) breaks within  
> SVG.
>
> The old reference to multi-page SVG that you found likely relates to a  
> proposal from the (never finalized) SVG1.2 specs.  That proposal >is  
> described here:  
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-SVG12-20041027/multipage.html
>
> However, that proposal would not have addressed your need for a  
> "breakable" SVG graphic.  Instead, it outlined a way to store >multiple,  
> distinct, graphics within a single file.  On screen, they would display  
> as a slide show, controlled by animation attributes.  In >print, they  
> would display as separate pages.  There was no way to have a large,  
> scrollable on-screen graphic that printed as multiple >pages.  In fact,  
> the proposal specifically prohibited re-using elements between pages in  
> order to optimize memory use.
>
> Therefore, if you're asking as a user agent implementer—what is the  
> correct way to break large SVGs—the answer is that it is not >specified.
>
> However, if you're asking as an author—how do I break my large SVGs  
> neatly across pages—the answer is that you would have to use >an HTML5  
> or XHTML document.
>
> By explicitly defining the separate pages as separate SVG elements  
> within HTML, not only can you have multiple distinct SVG >elements, but  
> they can each reuse the same core graphic content.  By adding a viewBox  
> attribute, you can pan and zoom that graphic to >the appropriate  
> position for that page.
>
> Explore my demonstration of the concept (and read my caveats) here:
>> http://codepen.io/AmeliaBR/details/jKxJz/
> Depending on your browser, you may have to save the contents of the  
> results iframe to a separate file in order to print out or preview >the  
> content with proper print layout styles.
>
> I found that I wasn't able to get the graphics to reliable scale to fit  
> the page across all browsers.  Even if I could, I still needed to  
> >explicitly define the number of pages and their viewBox attributes in  
> the markup.  
> If creating large, printable graphics is an important part of your web  
> site or service, you would probably want to create a JavaScript or  
> >server-side solution.  The user would enter the page size and layout  
> for printing, and the script would generate a separate print-preview  
> >HTML page with the correct number of SVG elements, sized appropriately.
>
> Finally, since this is the SVG WG newslist:  
> The approach given above may work around the problem, but this isn't an  
> edge case situation.  If SVG is to be used for large-scale >graphics and  
> maps, it would be useful to have a syntax within SVG to define preferred  
> coordinates for horizontal and vertical page >breaks, and the preferred  
> degree of overlap between pages.  
> If there are any plans to re-examine the idea of SVG views, this  
> discussion would probably fit well within that topic.
>
> -- Amelia Bellamy-Royds
>
>
> On 21 October 2014 10:25, Julien Chaffraix <jchaffraix@chromium.org>  
> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I was trying to determine the rules for breaking SVG content across
>> fragments and couldn't find anything relevant in the CSS 3
>> fragmentation or the SVG 2 specification.
>>
>> I only found an old discussion about this topic [1] but it doesn't
>> really define the details (e.g. is SVG content unbreakable if embedded
>> in some CSS paginated content?)
>>
>> Any help would be helpful!
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Julien
>>
>> [1]  
>> https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/svg-developers/conversations/topics/12178