Re: XSL Trans

[Paul Prescod <papresco@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

clilley wrote:
> [deletia]
> 
> I agree that doing good rendering is hard. However, products already
> exist that have the appropriate algorithms to do the sort of
> manipulations that are required when formatting text, flowing into
> containers, embedding images, etc. They can easily take in a declarative
> (CSS, XSL) description of styling plus a document instance and generate
> a rendered result.
> 
> They are called word processors, and it has been observed that it is
> much easier to add HTTP support to a wordprocessor than it is to add
> rendering support to a network utility. ... [deletia]

Idon't think that it is easy to create an editing environment that applies
an arbitrary transformation to the content and then lets you edit in the
transformed ("WYSIWYG") view. An extreme example is a stylesheet that
removes information. How can you edit documents that use this stylesheet
in a "WYSIWYG" view?  Clearly we are going to need different stylesheets
(and perhaps a different stylesheet *language*) for word processors.

Disturbingly, we may have some of the same problems on the browser end. If
you hyperlink to a particular element, and that particular element is
rendered in six different places, which one does the browser show you?

 Paul Prescod  - http://itrc.uwaterloo.ca/~papresco

How many of the Congresspeople who voted for the CDA do you suppose
also voted to release the report that reads like a borderline por-
nographic dime-store romance written by a Texas preacher's son?
	- Keith Dawson, TBTF 
		http://www.tbtf.com/archive/09-14-98.html
		http://www.tbtf.com/resource/hypocrites.html


 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list