About the style processing instruction

["Didier PH Martin" <martind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

Read carefully before posting an answer ;-)

I post this as a reflection source. Read the text as a proposal for a common
ground for other fellow style engine designers and style engine users.

Some may think that only W3 and the group of manufacturer it represent
should decide and us should be left with only the implementation and
sometime a feedback to remind us that we are not here to propose but to
follow. I still believe this should not be a single-directional process. A
standard, per se, is by definition what a group of people decide. We as a
group may as well express an opinion or a standard as valid as any
institution may impose. I then propose to follow style sheet engines and
users a discussion on the rendering output topic and this process will
result with a common way of specify the output format. But this time, with
open doors discussion. So, take the text below only as an introduction and
not a final proposal. The final proposal will be the result of this common
discussion. At least let's try.

Reasoning premises behind the text:
a) legacy formats present in corporation and institutions (example: tex,
Latex in the academic community, RTF in the desktop publishing business,
AutoCAD in the engineering field)
b) capacity to transform a XML document into an other format
c) capacity for a general purpose browser to use rendering format "on
demand"
d) capacity of the XML format to adapt to new "innovative" rendering formats
or languages and not being trapped in the "everything has been invented"
well known sentence said by the US Patent Bureau director at the beginning
of the century. I hope we will not repeat, at the begging of a new century
the same limited sight)

Of course when we will be in a perfect world and when a single rendering
format will fulfill all imaginable needs, such proposal will become
obsolete. This proposal in then to answer concrete needs during this
intermediary stage. Instead of receiving the censure of the inquisition I
would prefer to listen and get feedback from people from this list. Please
keep the discussion as objective as possible and targeted to the benefit of
end users and their short, and medium term needs (If possible also long term
until we get the perfect world where all rendering needs are fulfill by a
single model). Many thanks to whom still appreciate discussion toward a
certain progress and not conformance to a single ideology if this latter do
not respect our needs.

Here is essence of the proposal about a certain usage of the "media"
property. This is not a big thing but at least an active effort to resolve a
concrete problem.
-----------------------------
XML current specifications do not provide explicit means to convert a XML
documents into a particular format (Example: a XML document is transformed
into CGM format). However, The current W3 proposal by being based on CSS
style properties which allows the capacity to specify the rendering media
and provide way to add new media parameters.

XSL and CSS and DSSSL style engines, may allow an output format choice. To
fully support such capacity, the media property can be used to set the
desired output type.
The media property can be set to the output format as in the example below.
<?xml-stylesheet href="myScript.xsl" type="text/xsl" media="screen, tex" ?>
Note that the media property should contain the media type Ex. screen) and
the format (Ex. tex) separated by a comma. Other formats may be also
appended to these two previous attributes as required by future rendering
capabilities.
If the media property is not part of the style sheet processing instruction,
the default "media" property is set to "screen" and to the document renderer
default format. (Note: could be a browser but also anything else)

I Hope that this is OK for all actual style processing engine (and future
ones). Actually only a DSSSL style engine provide such functionality (thanx
to James). It is conceivable that XSL engines could provide such capacity
especially if formatting objects are supported. This is why the opinion of
style sheet engines designers could be important in this discussion. At
least, this discussion could be done "open" and not behind closed doors and
respect the Internet tradition of openness, sharing and collaboration.

Regards
Didier PH Martin
mailto:martind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.netfolder.com


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