[whatwg] Text support in <canvas>

Jayant Sai jsai at esri.com
Thu Nov 3 11:42:26 PST 2005


-----Original Message From: James Graham-----

> Allowing text in <canvas> has serious accessibility problems.
Presumably such text would not be
> resizable and encouraging authors to use non-resizable text in their
web-apps is not a good idea.
> I guess there would also be (separate) issues with fonts; one assumes
font substitution on a 
> bitmap drawing would be more problematic than font substitution where
the text is the main
> content.

Definitely support for advanced transformations of text using shapes and
resizing and all other fun stuff is expected. It is left to the web
developer to decide how to implement this behaviour. For example, I may
render text onto the canvas at a certain location, but on a event, clear
that area and then resize and then draw the text at the same location.

> Isn't VML substantially closer to SVG (which supports text)?

My knowledge of SVG is a little weak, but if the content is to be
created dynamically through Javascript, I am not sure if SVG will be
able to support. Isn't SVG tied to a file defining the content?

As a web developer, I do not plan on using the <canvas> for static
bitmap drawing, I definitely want to be able to create dynamic content
including text.

Jayant



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