Re: RTF styles from jade? (was Re: (dsssl) How to make a RTFstyles-sheet with DSSSL?)

[Ron Ross <ronross@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Paul, and sorry for the delay.

Many thanks for your response. Your comments are enlightening and I'm
actually reading the RTF spec to understand what we're dealing with.

"Paul Tyson" <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
> Exposing DSSSL 'style' objects would be a good thing, not just for the
> RTF backend, but others as well. (A CSS backend, for instance.) I
> don't think it would be useful to try it any other way--for instance,
> just gathering up all the characteristics that are applied in each
> construction rule, giving it a name, and writing it out as a 'style'.
>

I'm glad to hear you would favor using the style objects. I understand
for reasons you point out bellow, that constructing a stylesheet with
word processing styles in mind would require particular attention to how
the style expression is used. I think, both in the stylesheet and in the
backend, once such a path is taken, it would have to govern nearly every
facet of document formating to work, i.e., leave the least possible to
default values and inheritance in the RTF (or other backend)
interpreter.

> One significant theoretical difficulty is that flow object
> characteristics inherit hierarchically, while the prevailing
> "inheritance" of word processing styles is linear. (That is, certain
> characteristics of a paragraph in RTF are inherited from the preceding
> paragraph if not explicitly set or reset.)

I had forgotten about this dumb on/off mechanism for styles in word
processing documents (it had come up ages ago in the Abiword list).
Still, some things can be done with the "basedon" and "next" rtf-style
properties.

> But, at a minimum, the ability to export named styles would be useful.
> To make good use of this capability, you would have to write your
> style specifications very carefully, and the restrictions might prove
> too burdensome. I can imagine some situations where this could be
> useful, though.

It would certainly be useful for me. The prevailing paradigm here, it
seems, is of completely standards-based document processing that outputs
print-reading material. Nearly all of the documents I produce, however,
are destined to be processed by others, graphic/layout designers mostly.

And for those to whom I've vaunted the merits of markup, structure,
etc., it would befit me to provide documents that were more manageable
than current Ojade output: some small number of people actually _do_ try
to use the "styles" capability of word processors (it's a step in the
right direction); also, ojade rtf doesn't import cleanly in many
applications appart from MS Word.

I've started experimenting more with the style expression, and I like
it:) It's cleaner. A rewrite of my stylesheets in the offing, even if
the output can't (yet) reflect the fact, and I can see difficulties
arising with complicated node-list recursions...

All the best,

Ron


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