Bullseye!!

you are in savethegaywhale || msc || appendix15

Comments:

JASC Webdraw: a commercial product, which operates natively in SVG, offers an interface in the style of a proprietary graphic package such as Photoshop. Available from http://www.jasc.com/products/webdraw/ Price $179 (£97 12/01/04).

1. Can draw circles in an intuitive manner, but cannot manipulate DOM to ensure bull is visible and the other 2 circles are behind the bull in the correct order. Moving objects on the screen (by dragging or keyboard arrow press) is interpreted as a Transform translate attribute. This produces unnecessarily complex code. Unless circles drawn in correct order for the DOM source code editing skills are required. Task 1 is a Fail.
2. Able to achieve this, using the help facility, with no need to edit the source code. Task 2 is a Pass.
3. No mechanism to insert script, except via source code option, does not recognise ‘onend’ attribute. No reference to script in help. Task 3 is a Fail.
4. Able to achieve this with little difficulty. Task 4 is a Pass.
5. Able to achieve this with little difficulty. URL is entered via a dialogue box. Task 5 is a Pass.
6. Able to enter text and set colour, bold, italic and font attributes. However cannot change an attribute to a single word in a sentence. As with task 1, moving the object on screen produces complex code. Task 6 is a partial Pass.
7. Did not recognise much of the script and attribute tags in the file and would not even partially open the file. Task 7 is a Fail.

CorelDRAW: a commercial product, which port SVG (that is it offers a ‘save as’ SVG option and cannot open SVG files). Available from http://www.corel.com/ Price $429 (£233 12/01/04)

1. Can draw circles and rearrange order to ensure visibility of the bullseye, unable to edit source code. However saved SVG file has clean code with no unnecessary Transform translate attribute. Task 1 is a Pass.
2. No apparent support for translation over time. Task 2 is a Fail.
3. No apparent support for including script. Task 3 is a Fail.
4. Creating an ellipse and adding a fill is straightforward. Editing the fill to the exact style required is complicated. Task 4 is a partial Pass.
5. URL can be entered via a dialog box. Task5 is a Pass.
6. Able to enter text and set colour, bold, italic and font attributes and attributes individual of individual words can be altered. However the SVG file saves the text as glyphs (that is paths defining the shapes of the characters) not as an SVG text element. This loses some of the accessibility of the SVG file by making the text much more difficult to search for. Additionally any file with a lot of text would be extremely complex and potentially large. Task 6 is therefore a Fail.
7. When opening a version of ‘Bullseye’ an ‘I/O’ error alert box is displayed and the file is not opened. Task 7 is a Fail

SodiPodi: a zero cost open source project which claims to support most of the SVG1.0 standardhttp://www.sodipodi.com/)

1. Can draw circles, in reasonably intuitive manner (interface is in the multi palette style of the ’GIMP’ (an open source Graphics program) once the interface has been learnt. The DOM can be manipulated via an XML text editor, which gives access to individual elements and attributes not the plain code. Code produced is unnecessarily complex. Task 1 is a Pass.
2. Animation of any kind is not implemented in SodiPodi. Task is a Fail.
3. No support for script appears to be provided. Task 3 is a Fail.
4. Creating an ellipse and adding a fill is straightforward. Editing the fill to the exact style required is complicated. Task 4 is a partial Pass.
5. URL can be entered via a dialog box. Task5 is a Pass.
6. Able to enter text and set colour, bold, italic and font attributes. However cannot change an attribute to a single word in a sentence. As with task 1, moving the object on screen produces complex code. Task 6 is a partial Pass.
7. Able to load a version of ‘Bullseye’, however the XML editor did not recognise the existence of script, so that element could not be modified. Task 7 is a partial Pass.

SViGio: a zero cost simple graphics program primarily for creating UML diagrams http://www.davidputman.co.uk/svigio/

1. Program is able to draw circles and they can be aligned to form a target, however the radius cannot be precisely determined by entering the radius in a dialog box or can the source code be edited. It is also possible to move elements to the front or back of a collection. The SVG code produces was satisfactory. Task 1 is a partial Pass.
2. This can be achieved, however each element has to be animated separately as they cannot be grouped, which is a limitation and produces poor SVG. Task 2 is a partial Pass.
3. There is no support for script. Task 3 is a Fail.
4. Whilst an ellipse can be drawn there is no support for gradient fill. Task 4 is a Fail.
5. There is no support for hyperlinks. Task 5 is a Fail.
6. Text can be entered, but only within a shape. This limitation (and the other problems with this application) is due to the fact that this is a specialist application for making UML diagrams and as such it does not require advanced features. Task 6 is a partial Fail
7. There is no facility to load SVG files. Test 7 is a Fail.

EvolGrafix XStudio 2: claims to be a fully featured authoring environment, available from http://www.evolgrafix.com/ Price €499 (£345 12/01/04)

1. Able to create 3 circles and assign each an ID the elements can be moved from front to back, which the application interprets as DOM manipulation. The elements can be grouped and assigned an ID. The code is elegant, however unnecessary translations do occur. Task 1 is a Pass.
2. It is possible to make the target traverse the viewBox, however some understanding of SVG is helpful as the process is not intuitive. Task 2 is a partial Pass.
3. It is possible to insert script directly into the source code editor and the application saved the code with no error messages. There is also an interface that allows for insertion of script which the application then writes to the source code. Task 3 is a Pass.
4. This is straightforward; applying a fill can be done with little difficulty. Task 4 is a Pass.
5. This task is straightforward, although applying a ‘target’ tag is not possible except via the source code. Task 5 is a Pass.
6. Able to enter text and set colour, bold, italic and font attributes. However cannot change an attribute to a single word in a sentence. Task 6 is a partial Pass.
7. Succeeded in opening the ‘Bullseye’ application no apparent problems in the display, additionally the source code is displayed correctly and editable and any changes are saved correctly. Task 7 is a Pass.

Adobe Illustrator 10: commercial vector graphics creation product, however does not offer true native SVG support.

1. Able to create circles, manipulate their on screen order. However when saved the circles are saved as SVG ‘path’ elements not as ‘circle’ elements, this produce poor and complex SVG code. Task 1 is a partial Pass.
2. There is a facility in Illustrator to add JavaScript, but not SVG’s own interactivity features. Task 2 is a Fail.
3. This is theoretically possible, but as task 2 cannot be attempted, then Task 3 by default fails.
4. Creating an ellipse with a gradient fill is straightforward. Task 4 is a Pass
5. There is no facility to attach a hyperlink. Task 5 is a fail.
6. Text with different attributes was entered easily. Task 6 is a pass.
7. Illustrator failed to open ‘Bullseye’. Illustrator can open SVG files that have been created by Illustrator, however such files are filled with a lot of additional information, which significantly increases file size (from 4kb to 250kb in the case of Task 1). The effectively negates many of the benefits of SVG. Task 7 is a Fail.

Adobe Illustrator 10 has recently superseded by Illustrator CS, available from http://www.adobe.com/products/illustrator/ $499 (£276 16/01/04). Illustrator CS claims to offer support for SVG primitives, this may resolve the problem of always using ‘paths’ elements and should see ‘circle’ and ‘rect’ elements used where appropriate. However no further SVG integration is specified (such as ability to view and edit source code or add SVG interactivity and animation).