Hi Richard,
In terms of shading, the SVG WG seems to prefer mesh-gradients, though their use as a declarative tool (sans package) seems a bit prohibitive. Nevertheless, it will take some time for SVG 2.0 to be standardized and some time after that for gradient meshes to be implemented in the browsers, and in the meantime one has a pretty broad class of rich gradients available through <replicate>. Here are some examples I cobbled together in less than an hour this morning (unfortunately, the examples are using a different version of the base code than the "trunk" since it looks like we broke replicateModifier): http://cs.sru.edu/~ddailey/svg/gradRep1.svg These examples are fairly simple, using <replicateModifier> to retrieve the gradient applied to the rectangle and to change the colors in that gradient as the gradient's footprint is changed. Basically, replicateModifier is used to retrieve some of the modifiers of an SVG object (these might, in theory, be gradients, clipPaths, masks, filters, animations, patterns, or even replicates) and to modify those as the other attributes of an object are also modified. * My own sense is that replicate makes it easier for the author, working without a tool, to design custom gradients, but I'd have to agree, that the folks who have cobbled together examples for replicate have been more worried with extending the concepts, building the code and making the examples than with explaining how to do it. One of my students points out that a political mistake we may have made was to display too broad a range of its abilities, overwhelming, perhaps, folks who didn't have time to consider the proposal seriously. On the other hand, Inkscape and Illustrator give access to very rich, customizable gradients - it is just that the code exported for such gradients is not particularly accessible to a human who might later wish to polish it, program with it, or make it accessible to those who, for whatever reason, need access to that geometry, or to search engines of the future and the like. The "semantics" of replicate, being based on the semantics of animate makes more sense, at least to me. In terms of the declarative randomness, I'm in general agreement. I think fire, water, clouds, and even wood grain (see http://cs.sru.edu/~ddailey/svg/feTurbulence18.svg -- in either Firefox or Opera or IE/ASV) are perhaps easier with filters since feTurbulence does a nice job of pseudo-randomness with "fuzzy" things. When it comes to making crisp objects though, ( see for example, http://cs.sru.edu/~ddailey/svg/feTurbulence19.svg ) feTurbulence is a bit hard to shape into things like grass or hair, and even though we could distort it, post-hoc, by another feTurbulence using feDisplacement (as in http://cs.sru.edu/~ddailey/svg/feComposite5.svg or http://cs.sru.edu/~ddailey/svg/feComposite8.svg ) so as to convey a bit of wave or wind to the grain of the grass or hair, it is ultimately going to be easier to just draw a hundred or so proto-hairs into a pattern space with declarative randomness than to try to trick filters into giving us that functionality. I rather get the sense that some are declaring (using non declarative methods) that the golden age of declarative approaches to graphics is all in the past and that all will be henceforth be done with script, CSS and packages - a curious proposition since the packages have not yet been built! While this may appeal to the community of non-authors, I'm not so sure appeals to authors. Regards David *It would be nice if <animateModifier> were included in SVG 2.0, since it is a natural thing to want to do; I remembered to ask for <animatePath> to allow more precise control over all attributes of an animated object, but forgot to ask for the more obvious animateModifier. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of cremnosedum Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2011 1:00 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [svg-developers] Re: <replicate> Hi, I'd like to use replicate for my web comic, where I'm trying to make things look realistic in SVG. It would be very useful for things like realistically shading complicated shapes. Unfortunately, my big problem so far is that I haven't found a good explanation of how to use it. There are some examples but I haven't had the time or patients to figure out how they work and how to modify them for the space ship parts and things I need. > I'm also interested in incorporating "declarative randomness" - if one wants > to generate a few hundred objects into the DOM, why not have them be pseudo > random? I think this would be useful for drawing things like hair, grass, woodgrains etc. > Might anyone want to help contribute to such an open source project? I would consider it. Richard Pearman http://www.pixelpalaces.com/ The next stage in the evolution of web comics: http://www.onlinecomics.net/pages/details/listing.php?comicID=4415 Read my Helium articles: http://www.helium.com/users/212199 South Alberta Cactus and succulent society: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=20360241008 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ ----- To unsubscribe send a message to: [email protected] -or- visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/svg-developers and click "edit my membership" ----Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/svg-developers/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/svg-developers/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
