RE: [cgmo-webcgm] Groups - WebCGM TC telecon minutes 20070620 (20070620_WebCGM_TC_Telecon_minutes.doc) uploaded

[Lofton Henderson <lofton@rockynet.com>]

Hi Benoit,

Good analysis.  One comment, seeking clarification (perhaps I caused some 
confusion)...

At 04:27 PM 6/21/2007 -0400, Bezaire, Benoit wrote:
>Hi All,
>
>I missed the last part of the telecon (animation topic)...
>
>In my opinion, the use case presented to us, would be best solved using
>declarative animation.

In telecon used "declarative animation" as being defined by declarative 
language within the graphics file, SVG-like.  Implicitly, I distinguished 
it from DOM animation, where a script could drive the manipulations of 
properties through the DOM.  (And distinguished both from GIF-like 
"visibility animation".)

The two could give very similar results, in some cases.  Right now a DOM 
script could manipulate any of the Style Properties [1] and achieve a 
SVG-like result.  So you could cause the text size of some (object) string 
to swell and shrink.  Or the color to mutate.

[1] 
http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/REC-webcgm20-20070130/WebCGM20-DOM.html#styleprop-table

If there were a new "transform" style property (or APS attribute), you 
could do even more.  Etc...etc... E.g., if you could treat the Fill 
Reference Point as a style property, then you could achieve the illusion of 
flow in a pipe.  (Where the pipe contents is indicated by a pattern like 
"/  /  /..."

So in theory, DOM animation could give results similar to SVG-like 
declarative animation, and in any case, very much better than GIF-like 
animation.

There are issues with DOM approach, not the least of which are:

-- authoring: a content author who wants animation must produce a DOM 
script along with the original static picture;

-- performance: if the implementation knows that it is dealing with 
in-graphic declarative animation, it can optimize to ensure adequate 
performance.  With DOM animation, would adequate performance be 
problematic? (I don't know ... I'm asking the question.)

The biggest advantage of DOM animation is obvious -- we don't have to 
invent and impose an intra-WebCGM animation language.

A couple more comments...

>Things like fluid levels and water flow can't
>really be addressed with an animated gif or visibility animation. It
>just wouldn't look very good. Or if it did look decent; it would require
>a lot of work from a user perspective (probably too much to be
>acceptable).

Right ... animated GIF is extremely limited, DOM animation is less so but 
still somewhat, and both are shifting burden to the authoring side, from 
the viewing side.


>There are four main classes of animation:
>i) transforms: rotate, scale, translate, skew.
>ii) colors: fill, stroke etc...
>iii) motion along a path (somewhat similar to a translation).
>iv) point animation, ex: adjusting the 'length' of a rectangle, two of
>the four corners (i.e., points) move over time.
>
>This a lot of work and would require a very serious commitment from all
>implementers.

Indeed.  I'm unsure how implementers feel about implementing a chunk of 
SVG-like declarative animation language.

On the other hand, what are the tech-pubs requirements, and how much of 
them (if any) could be met in a short-term approach with a couple new 
properties and DOM animation?  (You implementors probably have some sense 
of this.)

Regards,
-Lofton.




>-----Original Message-----
>From: david.w.cruikshank@boeing.com
>[mailto:david.w.cruikshank@boeing.com]
>Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2007 4:02 PM
>To: cgmo-webcgm@lists.oasis-open.org
>Subject: [cgmo-webcgm] Groups - WebCGM TC telecon minutes 20070620
>(20070620_WebCGM_TC_Telecon_minutes.doc) uploaded
>
>The document named WebCGM TC telecon minutes 20070620
>(20070620_WebCGM_TC_Telecon_minutes.doc) has been submitted by Mr. david
>cruikshank to the OASIS CGM Open WebCGM TC document repository.
>
>Document Description:
>Minutes of telecon
>
>View Document Details:
>http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/cgmo-webcgm/document.php?do
>cument_id=24466
>
>Download Document:
>http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/cgmo-webcgm/download.php/24
>466/20070620_WebCGM_TC_Telecon_minutes.doc
>
>
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