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[rfc-i] Text in SVG diagrams

Martin Thomson <mt@lowentropy.net> Wed, 06 October 2021 23:56 UTC

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Date: Thu, 07 Oct 2021 10:55:48 +1100
From: Martin Thomson <mt@lowentropy.net>
To: rfc-interest@rfc-editor.org
Subject: [rfc-i] Text in SVG diagrams
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https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8899.html appears to use SVG quite effectively.  The diagrams really help illustrate the concepts in the document.

Lucas Pardue recently noted that appearances are not everything.  It is not possible (at least in browsers I have available to me) to search for text in these diagrams.  This is because every single character is placed separately as a distinct SVG element.

You can see the effect of this if you try to select text in any of the figures (https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8899.html#figure-4 is a good example).  I don't know what characters to be shuffled this way, but the effect is that text cannot be searched for or selected in any useful way.

I'm certain that this is not malice on the part of the authors or RPC, but the effect is that these diagrams are far less accessible than they could be.  Is there something we might do to improve this situation?
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