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This document lists the design principles and requirements for the creation of a SVG specification related to Transforms.
This is a W3C Working Draft for review by W3C Members and other interested parties. It is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or made obsolete by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use W3C Working Drafts as reference material or to cite them as other than "work in progress". A list of current W3C Recommendations and other technical documents, including Working Drafts and Notes, can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR/
This is the first release of the SVG Transforms Requirements. It is expected that this document will progress through a number of working drafts, including "Last Call", before being published in final form.
This document was developed by the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) working group as part of the W3C Graphics Activity. The authors of this document are the SVG Working Group members.
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This section represents the status of this document at the time this version was published. It will become outdated if and when a new version is published. The latest status is maintained at the W3C.
SVG is an W3C XML technology that describes two-dimensional grpahics. There are currently two SVG Recommendations; SVG 1.1 and SVG Tiny 1.2. SVG 1.1 was designed primarily for 2 dimensional Web content, and as such supports only 2 dimensional object features for screen display. Similarly SVG Tiny 1.2 was designed primarily for 2 dimensional Web content on mobile devices. Industry, developer and community feedback has suggested a desire to form a module that allows 2.5 dimensional effects to be achieved in SVG.
In response, the SVG Working Group will develop a module to extend the transformation capabilities of SVG called SVG Transforms. The current feeling within the Working Group is that SVG Transforms will be a set of content requirements and conformance criteria that allow 3D transformations of 2D objects. It is very likely that there will be a set of new language features proposed which are required for SVG Transforms, but will be equally useful in other domains. It is expected then, that some of these new features will become part of the core SVG language and other modules that are built from SVG.
The following key words and phrases used throughout this document are defined here for clarity. The terms Must, Should, and May are used to specify the extent to which an item is a requirement for the SVG working group in defining SVG. These recommendations should not be mistaken as a guide to implementors.
The following usage scenarios illustrate some of the ways in which SVG Transforms might be used for various applications. They may be used as design cases during the development of the SVG transforms module, and should be useful in helping non-members of the SVG Working Group to understand the intent and goals of this task.
Use Interfaces. SVG Transforms could be used to describe a user interface that has a 3D appearence. The interface can be rescalled for different screen sizes.
Web Graphics and Fonts. SVG Transforms could be used to enhance the web experience of a website. Effects could be used that make the text appear 3D.
Mapping. SVG Transforms could be used to change the angle or perspective of a raster or SVG map. A perspective view on a map makes viewing of upcoming intersections and roads easier to follow. Additionally it gives the viewer the effect of travellind down the road on the map.
3D Movement of Objects. 3D Movement can be given to existing SVG content containing Graphics, Images, Movies and Text. A container element with SVG Transforms applied could placed around existing content to give the content the appearance 3D Movement.
Perspective view of Objects. Perspective views can be given to exisiting SVG content containing Grahpics, Images, Movies and Text to give the illusion that they are vanishing in the distance. A container element with SVG Transforms applied could be placed around existing content to give the content a perspective view.
Game Effects. The transform extensions provided by SVG XTransorms can be used for online gaming and hand held gaming devices. Such applications may require the illusion of a 3D environment but do not have the processing capabilities or the bandwidth to support a full 3D polygon model. SVG Transforms could be used as an alternative for such applications.
Interchange Format. User selects "Export.." or "Save As..." from a 3D vector drawing or CAD application and chooses the SVG file type. The application then converts its internal vector format to SVG with SVG Transforms and saves the file to disk. This behaviour is very similar to the Adobe Illustrator or Microsoft Visio export behaviour.
Implementation commitments. SVG Transforms will provide additional transformation options to the author. To support SVG Transforms, implementations may need to extend thier transformation pipeline to allow operations with larger matricies to be performed. Addtional mathematical operations may be required by the implementation to support SVG Transforms.
Ease of authoring. The additional transformations provided by SVG Transforms should use a syntax that is similar to current SVG transformations and coordinates. Units should be kept consistent with the current SVG specifications to ensure ease of authoring. The transform commands that SVG Transforms provides should be intuative and if possible easily recognised by a person skilled in the art of graphics and 3D drawing.