On Thu, 2014-09-18 at 11:58 -0700, mathog wrote:
I guess what really mystifies me is why anybody cares what the numbers look like in the raw SVG. It may be a text file, but that does not mean it is intended for human (end user) consumption. Human interaction with an SVG should be through a viewer (for passive consumption), or an editor (like Inkscape, for composition). So why does it matter if the user units are px, inch, or mm? Are you extracting text from the raw SVG for other purposes, or is the GUI having problems representing the values, in some way, for some unit settings?
The ASCII/text nature of SVG is quite important mathog.
As developers we use this to read and write from our programs easily. As testers we craft documents by hand that break or test features. As users we open the text admiringly in an editor and gawk at it's majesty.
And as students learn by looking at our sources, hacking on them, editing the css and playing with templating engines. (do you know how many contracts I've had that involved templating svg documents)
What we shouldn't do; is just assume text files are only machine-readable. XML and similar formats are intended to bridge the gap between human readable and machine readable. Our outputs should aim for machine consistency AND human beauty.
Making the units human units is a nice thing to do for our human users.
Best Regards, Martin Owens