# from Joshua A. Andler # on Friday 17 March 2006 01:29 pm:
And the other potential solution we thought of was having the clipPath (or mask) in defs just have a link to an object on canvas.
This thread seems to be mostly about clipping, but I would like to visit an issue about masks.
The XAR transparency object is totally separate from the fill. Rather than the RGBA, the fill only describes color (albeit in CMYK, RGB, etc) and the transparency object can describe flat or gradient (linear, elliptical, radial, etc) transparency. This allows you to have e.g. a vertical linear transparency over a horizontal linear gradient.
The only way that I have found to express this in SVG is with a mask, but ideally I would like to be able to link the mask entities to the entities on the canvas. I have found that I can accomplish this by referencing (use) them both to an entity in the defs section, but that disables editing in inkscape's canvas. All other forms seem to lead to circular linkage. Suggestions?
http://scratchcomputing.com/tmp/mask_linked.svg
Maybe some mode of editing entities in the defs section? Possibly in a separate canvas or just as ghosted (dotted?) shapes on the main canvas?
--Eric