Qt SVG renderer

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Wednesday 06 August 2008, Ariya Hidayat wrote:
> > Yes, I actually have thought several times about this. How could the svg
> > renderer on webkit help us ? Would be a doable (easy) way of stripping
> > all the css + js things, just letting the part that is important for us
> > and introducing it into kdelibs ?
>
> Why would you want to simplify the lib and put it in kdelibs? You can
> just use QtWebKit as is. For an example, check out:
> http://ariya.blogspot.com/2008/08/svg-to-png-using-qtwebkit.html

of course, since QSvgRenderer also renders the tiger just fine, this is not a 
useful example.

from the Plasma perspective, we also don't particularly have need for access 
to the DOM or scriptablity right now (though i'm sure we could find (ab)uses 
for them without too much trouble ;)

as you note in your blog, things like blur are not implemented in QtWebkit's 
SVG renderer either. so we're right back to asking, "when?"

obviously the answer is "sooner than QSvgRenderer will" but that is still a 
bit vague.

it also doesn't help at all with the performance (both speed and memory 
overhead) question. 

and i'm particularly unimpressed that we'll end up having to build up a set of 
API for what is really simple now (e.g. elementRect("anObjectid")) based on 
JavaScript right now (!!) and *eventualy* DOM (only minorly less "!!"). 
thankfully we wrapped QSvgRenderer in Plasma::SVG so we can indeed do this 
kind of thing without breaking any SVG usage in Plasma, but still .. uck.

for Plasma to switch renderers, i'd really have to have a bettter idea of 
performance and development timelines. otherwise it'll continue to be a "wait 
and see" issue without us doing anything different on this front.

having a coherent plan for vector graphics may be something that the Qt 
Software engineering team would like to consider prioritizing and sharing with 
their downstream. it's only going to become an increasingly important area in 
the user interface side of life (and not just limited to SVG, of course) ..

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Trolltech

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