From 9f355244cdb312a8c7d53f4825fb5c295f825e40 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: John Firebaugh Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2013 12:14:55 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] Start FAQ --- FAQ.md | 14 ++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 14 insertions(+) create mode 100644 FAQ.md diff --git a/FAQ.md b/FAQ.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..f8d020714 --- /dev/null +++ b/FAQ.md @@ -0,0 +1,14 @@ +## Why not use canvas rather than SVG? + +Using canvas rather than SVG would require implementing a scenegraph, hit-testing, +event dispatch, animation, and other features provided natively by SVG. All that is +a significant amount of work, would have meant a longer time for the initial release +of iD, and would likely increase the ongoing costs of maintenence and new features. + +On the other hand, SVG is already fast enough in many or most hardware/browser/OS/editing +region combinations, and will only get faster as hardware improves and browser vendors +optimize their implementations and take better advantage of hardware acceleration. + +In other words, the decision to use SVG rather than canvas was a classic performance +vs. implementation cost tradeoff with strong arguments for trading off performance to +reduce implementation costs.