Re: (dsssl) raw text

[Brandon Ibach <bibach@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Quoting Trent Shipley <tcshipley@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> As I understand it, if you want raw HTML output from OpenJade then you must 
> write a new stylesheet and use OJ extentsions.
> 
   There is another alternative, which is to use Jade/OpenJade's HTML
backend.  This backend, originally implemented by James Clark and
later enhanced by Didier Martin, uses the standard DSSSL flow objects,
rather than the extensions, and produces a combination of HTML and CSS
as output.
   It is rarely used, as I understand it, and I'm not sure how the
quality would compare to what you'd get by creating a different
stylesheet using the SGML backend, but it may be worth a look, if
you're interested in this approach.  Perhaps you might even go at the
source of the backend and improve it. :)  There's nothing like the
specific needs of a real-life application to drive improvements to a
piece of software.
   I should say that this backend may suffer some of the same problems
that David mentioned about there being a lack of semantic information
which could help drive decisions about which tags to use and such.
However, the backend would be much closer to the stylesheet than a
LaTeX to HTML converter, so it may be possible to handle this a little
better, possibly through some "hints" placed in the flow object tree
by the stylesheet.  For instance, there is an extension to provide
"header level" information in the flow object tree, which can be used
by the RTF backend for purposes such as outline generation (or
something like that... don't recall the details for sure).

-Brandon :)

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