Re: XSL formatting objects to HTML

["\"Pasqualino \\\"Titto\\\" Assini\"" <assini@xxxxxxxx>]

Chris Lilley wrote:

> \"Pasqualino \\\"Titto\\\" Assini\" wrote:
> >
> > Henry S. Thompson wrote:
> > > I'm working on a style-sheet which maps fo:... to XML+CSS, will
> > > probably release it once there's a browser out there that can handle
> > > the result :-(
>
> > Why not mapping to HTML+CSS ?
>
> No good reason to, and good reason not to.
>
> HTML, as implemented in several current CSS-enabled browsers, has some
> hard-coded presentational aspects. For example, some tags have margins
> that cannot be reset, or they cannot be made to be block, or made to be
> inline, etc.
>
> XML does not have these restrictions because there is no hard-coded
> processing of the elements. Also, it is much easier to generate a
> consistent parse tree from XML than from an SGML application (no omited
> start or end tags, etc) and for consistent presentation of CSS- (or
> indeed of XSL-) styled documents, a consistent parse tree is essential.
>
> --
> Chris
>
>  XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list

I understand your reasons but, given that people in the Internet uses
browsers with very different capabilities, it would be very useful to have a
range of converters from FO to different HTML flavors.

Converting to XML+CSS is a nice idea but it's very unluckily that this
particular combination will be of any real use at the moment.

This doesn't apply if you are interested only in intranet applications where
the use of a particular browser can be enforced (but if you work in such
kind of controlled environment it would probably be more efficient to
translate directly to the HTML dialect supported by the chosen browser).


Is anyone aware of any attempt to provide an adaptive rendering capability
using a browser's capabilities detector and a bunch of appropriate FO to
HTML/CSS/XML converters ?

I wonder if an extended FO vocabulary might be used to specify java applets
interfaces as well.

Regards

--
Pasqualino "Titto" Assini
The Data Archive - University of Essex, UK



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