Re: DSSSL Documentation Project

["G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 11:25 98/01/19 -0500, Paul Prescod wrote:
>I think many of us are concerned about the fact that a year from now,
>DSSSL may be radically different than it is today...the XSL proposal
>suggests that DSSSL should have *two* syntaxes and a whole pile of new
>flow objects. I personally would be more confident about contributing
>more if I knew what was going to change and what wasn't.

Which is why I think nobody is going to find (or write) a paper book just
yet on DSSSL or XSL.

Some of you may have heard last summer that I was contemplating
contributing a DSSSL book to the Prentice-Hall series managed by Charles
Goldfarb.  The draft XSL was announced early September before I negotiated
and signed a contract, so I immediately withdrew from the project citing
the uncertainty in the specification.

I haven't talked with them about the book since, and I haven't heard if
anyone else has decided to contribute in this area to that series.  If you
think it can be done, they could very well still be looking for an author
... I don't know.  The people involved seemed quite reasonable from the
brief interchange I personally had with them.  Let me know privately if you
want the name and email of my former contact at Prentice-Hall (I'd rather
not broadcast it to the list).

In my opinion, anything carved in stone (paper!) today about DSSSL/XSL is
going to be out of date tomorrow.

But .... I do think an "online Internet-based book" is viable, given that
it can change with the winds and reflect new ideas and syntax as it comes
available.

......... Ken

--
G. Ken Holman            mailto:gkholman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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