decades of work with vector graphics -- SVG 3

Hi ya'll (but certainly not those whose hackles bristle at attempts to
re-introduce a vernacular English 2nd person plural - to those, I
unambiguously apologize for the intrusion),

 

In preparation for a talk next week (at The Graphical Web) about embracing
topology in addition to simple geometry (and that odd-hasty-pudding known as
"presentation") in graphical web standards, I realized 2 things:

 

1.       that I had spent (see [1])

a.       1 and 2/5 decades [2] experimenting with things that are "hard" for
SVG

b.      3/5 decades in frustration with lack of progress by the SVG WG in
implementing "new stuff" (such as vector effects from SVG1.2 back in a
previous millennium wasn't it) and superpath (how many scholarly papers
really need to written to demonstrate the use case??). (You can merely
imagine the 407 new features that I've held my tongue about since the last
score of proposals for new features for SVG2 was quietly unverbed in favor
of hasty pudding.)

c.       Four.zero decades (approximately two score years) experimenting
with the visualization of mathematics and paradoxical art.

2.       There is ongoing work at UBC [3] closely related to some of what
I'll be talking about. 

 

I was completely delighted (through a serendipitous web search) to learn of
the work of Boris Dalstein and colleagues at UBC (and INRIA/Grenoble). It
turns out they posted here at www-svg recently [4]. The ideas presented are,
unambiguously a part of what the future of web graphics needs to be thinking
about. (think, superpath, connectors, 2.5 dimensional effects, and a goodly
subset of what the SVG advocates (as opposed to the implementers) have been
talking about for many fifths of decades.  Mr. Dalstein has spent a goodly
amount of time making fundamental concepts of topology accessible to
non-topologists, so the work is very accessible!

 

This sort of stuff will happen, it is just a question of whether you want to
be involved or not!

 

Smiling,

David

 

[1] http://cs.sru.edu/~ddailey/drawing/NotationOutline.html

[2] fifths are a standard measure of both decades and whiskey

[3] Vector Graphics complexes <http://www.dalboris.com/research/vgc/vgc.pdf>
Boris Dalstein, Re'mi Ronfard, Michiel van de Panne, 2016.

[4] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-svg/2016Sep/0044.html