

Re: SVG 1.2 Comment: Flowing text and graphics

From: Peter Sorotokin <psorotok@adobe.com>
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 12:08:42 -0800
To: Boris Zbarsky <bzbarsky@MIT.EDU>
Cc: www-svg@w3.org
Message-id: <>

At 01:11 PM 11/30/2004 -0600, Boris Zbarsky wrote:
>Peter Sorotokin wrote:
>>I think you are missing the point. I am not talking about semantics or 
>I realize that you were not.  I believe they are something to keep in mind 
>when making such decisions, however.
>>I am saying that new attribute *syntax* is not as good as new markup 
>That's a vast generalization.  In this case, why have any attributes at 
>all? Why not do everything via markup?

Things that are not human-readable text basically must be attributes. And 
it is OK to reuse attribute microsynax where it is already defined (e.g. 
css length).

>>This is a generally accepted rule for SVG and the only deviation from it 
>>is path data (where XML syntax was too verbose).
>And you don't feel that it is for this case, I suppose?

Certainly not. It is not going to cause file size explosion (as path data did).

>>But what if I want to fill with text only a shape which is not obscured 
>>by something else, and I don't want to calculate the shape which is my 
>>shape minus that something else (which might be dynamic).
>Is this a common use case?

At least as common as float in HTML.

>   If not, perhaps you _should_ calculate the shape instead of forcing 
> every UA implementor to have code to do so?

There are more users than user agent implementors. And implementation is 
not hard.

>Just a question to be considered, though I'm sure that was done before 
>this part of the specification was written.
>>flowRef decouples drawing from flowing, so it is needed almost in any 
>>case when shapes differ in any way.
>So the idea here is that you can flow into multiple regions and then 
>rearrange the regions in various ways later and that the flowing doesn't 
>have to be aware of the rearranging?

Exactly. Rearranged or redrawn with various effects.


>>Does it mean that if we reference it, we have to stay in CR until it 
>>moves to Rec?
>I don't believe that is the case, but I'm not that familiar with the W3 
>process rules, not being a member of any working groups...  So it's worth 
Received on Tuesday, 30 November 2004 20:08:46 UTC
