Missing the point

Article:
SVG: A Sure Bet

Subject: Missing the point

Date: 2003-07-19 18:21:48

From: x emplify

Response to: Missing the point

Paul wrote: "Well, my presentation is available in SVG here:
http://www.blastradius.com/svgopen2003/
"

Unfortunately I could not view this using either the Corel viewer in Mozilla 1.4 in Windows XP or using the Java open-source Batik Squiggle SVG viewer.

I found the following errors:

1) At line 14973: equality (==) mistyped as assignment (=)

My fix, change from:
while (gpage = doc.getElementById("Page_"+p)) {
to:
while (gpage == doc.getElementById("Page_"+p)) {

2) At line 5370, col 167: incomplete path element, and path element not allowed within tspan element

My fix, change from:
<path d="M180.343,153.481c0,27
to:


At this point the file would still not work in the the viewers due to more scripting related problems.

When I came across SVG three years ago, I too was very excited by the possiblities that it offered. I applaud Paul's efforts to promote SVG. However my inability to view this file highlights one of the problems SVG faces: generators and viewers that do not follow the SVG specification.

It seems that the SVG generator Paul used to produce his presentation produced non well-formed XML, invalid SVG and erroneous EcmaScript. Presumably some SVG viewer allows the file to be viewed dispite the mistakes, leading to the false belief that it is conformant SVG.

It is up to SVG developers to demand that implementors respect the SVG specfication, otherwise all the promise of interoperability is for nothing. In the mean time those producing SVG for the web should check their files for cross viewer compatibility.

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Missing the point
2003-07-20 12:49:49 Paul Prescod [Reply]

Thanks for the report. I've forwarded it to the makers of the software. SVG developers should definately test with at least Adobe SVG and Batik.

Missing the point
2003-07-22 17:42:14 Paul Prescod [Reply]

1) At line 14973: equality (==) mistyped as assignment (=)

Actually this is legal ECMAscript.

At line 5370, col 167: incomplete path element

There is no path element there. There is some literal character data using the ampersand greater-than character but no XML parser should treat that as an element and no SVG viewer should either. Whichever viewer you were using that does this is making a mistake.

For now, the Adobe implementation is quite a bit ahead of the others in implementing advanced features of the spec.
- Missing the point
  2003-07-22 20:13:15 x emplify [Reply]
  
  Apologies for the mistakes in my analysis. In the Mozilla browser status bar, the Corel Viewer suggested that the = instead of == maybe a mistake. Doing view SVG source from the Corel Viewer in Mozilla gave me the XML with the <path replaced by the
  Still, there is a null pointer exception in the Batik Squiggle viewer that is preventing the file from being viewed. Not sure if this is a spec violation on the part of the file, or a lack of something implemented in Batik.
  
  Regardless I would still suggest that SVG developers use a subset of the SVG specification that can be viewed in all major SVG viewers. I would also like generation tools that have an option to produce cross-viewer compatible SVG.
  
  For over a year I have been using Mozilla because it beats IE on features hands down. Also using Mozilla means I can use the same browser on both Windows at work and my Linux desktop at home. Until I can view the majority of SVG files on the Web in the latest release of Mozilla, SVG is a dead Web format for me. I would imagine that there are many Linux users that feel the same way.
  
  I hope that the newly formed Mozilla Foundation places more emphasis on the development of native support for SVG in the near future.
  - Missing the point
    2003-07-28 20:48:59 Stuart Begg [Reply]
    
    FYI: I am able to view the referenced SVG presentations using Mozilla 1.4 on Mac OS X 10.2.6, with the Adobe SVG Plug-in (v3.0). I have not tried any of the other plug-ins you mention.