Re: Venting 2

[Paul Prescod <paul@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Chris Lilley wrote:
> 
> FO isn't a "language" unless you also consider HTML, DocBook, etc to to
> be langauges. 

FO isn't a language because it is not defined that way. HTML and DocBook
are languages because they are defined in that way (i.e. in terms of
characters in a sequence).

> Its an XSML namespace, though. It should be possible to
> write a DTD or other schema for it. I don't se it being "implicit" in
> the XSL spec, it seems quite explicit to me.

The formatting object *language* is implicit. It is defined in terms of a
tree, not in terms of a set of legal character sequences. There is no
provision for an XSL processor of any sort to take a stream of <fo:foo>
elements as an XML stream and display them without first applying a
stylesheet (at least the identity stylesheet).

> That software is called a formatter. If the software that generates the
> FOs is also the software that consumes them, then it makes no sense to
> write out the FOs to a file. If the formatter is on a different computer
> than the software that generated the FOs - for exampl, if the formatter
> is in a printer - then it does make sense to serialise it out.

The XSL specification does not define a software component called a
formatter. There is a single monolithic beast called an "XSL Processor."
That's what I am complaining about.

 Paul Prescod  - ISOGEN Consulting Engineer speaking for only himself
 http://itrc.uwaterloo.ca/~papresco

"Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did,
but she did it backwards and in high heels."
                                               --Faith Whittlesey


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