One way to look at this is that the purpose of the facsimile tagset is
to make easy things easy. I.e., to allow users who have relatively
simple requirements to meet them without delving into SVG.

From this point of view, it might be argued that the TEI facsimile
mechanism is already too complicated. 

If one has a complicated task (like multiple non-rectangular zones
with lines of text that are not parallel, e.g.), one is probably going
to have to do complicated things. We already have a complicated way of
doing this -- SVG -- is there much to gain in inventing another?


> I'll be presenting a poster at the TEIMM in November on the digital
> facsimiles tagset and one thing I'd like to look at is changes that
> could be made to improve it. There are two real weaknesses that I
> see. First, that we are limited to rectangular bounding boxes
> (unless we use SVG), and second that there is no clear way to
> account for non-horizontal text (text written sideways, upside down,
> diagonally, in a spiral, etc.). These two issues overlap - a
> rectangular box around text written diagonally across a page will
> include a lot of unnecessary information.
> 
> Have you all on the list come across other things that you would
> like to be able to do with the digital facsimiles tagset, but find
> that you can't? If so, how have you dealt with it and what changes
> to the TEI would you suggest?
> 
> Thanks for any suggestions!