I agree with this, but "SVG" by itself can't be the whole answer.  It  
would be useful  to produce recommendations and develop practices for  
handling complex linkages using SVG (and/or other technologies).

Hugh

/**
  * Hugh A. Cayless, Ph.D
  * Head, Research & Development Group
  * Carolina Digital Library and Archives
  * UNC Chapel Hill
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  */






On Sep 9, 2008, at 10:09 AM, Syd Bauman wrote:

> 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!