W3C Scalable Graphics Requirements
Scalable graphics are a good thing for the Web. They are resizable
to cope with differing display densities, print better, and can give
enhanced responsiveness. Following are some requirements for scalable
Web graphics.
Open specification
- Open specification - not subject to sudden change by a single vendor. Preferably submitted to an open forum such as W3C, IETF RFC, etc.
- Ready availability to the casual implementor is desirable.
- Extensible to cope with changing requirements
- Widely implemented; at minimum, proof of concept implementation.
- Reference code desirable
- Lack of subset problems, incompatible generator/reader sets.
Graphical facilities
- Vector graphics - line segments, closed filled shapes
- Curved elements
- Text, ISO10646 repertoire, font selection
- Truecolor mode - not restricted to indexed color
- Transparency (alpha)
- Layering, stencilling/masking
- Control of line termination and mitring
- Levels of detail
- Include raster data
Interaction
- Zoom and Pan
- Pick single elements
- Switchable layers
- Element grouping into semantic structures
- Active menus on pick
- Links to other views/ other pictures in same file
- Links to external media (URL embedding)
- Linkable from external media (#)
Metadata
Desirable that the metadata be readilly extractable by search and
indexing engines, also by browsers (on the fly html generation).
- Author, title, copyright (Dublin Core)
- Aspect ratio ,physical size for stand-alone print
- Technical details - capturemethodology, etc
- Availability of other versions, costs, etc
Authoring tools
There should be wide cross-platform support in existing content creation tools which should be able to export the format; preferably, re-import it for aditional editing.
Additional tools for metadata and link editing are desirable
Browsability
Desirable that the graphic can be displayed as it is streamed in
from the network. Internal directories and offsets are thus
undesirable.
Chris
Created: 1996/05/24 11:27:36
Last update: $Date: 1996/12/09 03:13:43 $