The idea is attractively simple, but I see some problems:
- layer visibility is an Inkscape-specific thing, separate from CSS
visibility of individual objects
That's problem #1. Remember that our SVG must render the same anywhere. If I hide a layer and save, I must not see that layer in Batik either. I don't see how you can achieve this, other than by manually adding SVG invisibility to all objects that are in an invisible layer (messy).
Also:
- I disagree that layers should not be related to z-order. A very useful operation (in a traditional vector editor) is re-z-ordering layers, which is not possible with your scheme - except if you select all objects in a layer and group them and move them up or down... which brings us back to the original scheme.
- The notion of current layer is possible (just add the name of the current layer to all newly created objects), but again this disregards z-order which may be very inconvenient. For example if I work in a layer which is on top of "background" layer but under the "shades" layer, I expect all new objects to be created in between these layers as well. In your scheme, they're still added on top of all objects, which makes the entire layer thing less than useful.
- The idea of an object belonging to more than one layer is cool, but the more I think of it the less I like it. I think it's just unclean and will give users lots of headaches (such as "Why hasn't this object disappeared when I hide its layer? Why do some objects in X disappear when I delete everything in Y?" etc) without significant advantages (or at least I don't see such advantages). When I want object X to be visible both with layer Y and with layer Z, I just put it in a third layer and name it accordingly and manipulate it as needed. I think it's saner that way.
Or am I missing something?
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