Re: SVG animations without SMIL

On Jun 4, 2015, at 10:33 AM, Erik Dahlstrom <erik@xn--dahlstrm-t4a.net<http://dahlstrm-t4a.net>> wrote:


* Animating between paths with different numbers/types of segments
  (Different types of segments are easy to handle, but for a different
   number of segments I think you need some concept of anchor points.)

This requires precise control over how the path normalization/segmentation is performed, if this is to be 100% interoperable. Is that acceptable to everyone?


If you search for researches on this topic you'll find dozens of different algorithms to interpolate two arbitrary paths. All of them have advantages and disadvantages. Even worst, some are better suited in one situation some in others. Many (most?) algorithms are not even royalty free.

As much as I sympathize with Brian’s request, I don’t think that we should go there. It doesn’t matter on which algorithm we agree on. There will always be at least 50% of use cases that you can not archive or not archive in a visually pleasant way.

Choosing the most simple animation is the best we can do. I know that authoring tools haven’t done a great job helping authors. IMO the current way to animate a path stream is still the lowest common denominator.

Greetings,
Dirk