Re: Transformation + FOs makes abuse easy

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 12:20 PM 4/28/99 -0700, Chuck White wrote:
>1) How are XML semantics lost if the original XML source document is
>ultimately delivered? Maybe I don't understand what is even meant by
>semantics, but my impression is that there is concern that the data
>represented by the original XML element markup will be lost using FOs. If
>that's the argument, I just would like to know how. 
>
>It seems to me that the formatting vocabulary could be just about anything,
>as long as the source document is always available.

On this last point, you're right.  My concerns arise when developers
perform the transformation end on the server and ship FOs (or
formatting-oriented HTML) from the server to the browser in place of the
original document and style sheet.  These cases are not a problem _if_ the
original document (with meaningful markup) is available freely.

Unfortunately, as has been noted several times on this list, there is a
good business case for organizations to distribute only the FO version for
free, and charge for the meaningful original.  Maybe it's good for the
business, but I'd argue it's bad for the Web community.

>2) How are the current FO's structured differently than the CSS objects
>described in Håkon's W3 note (http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-XSL-and-CSS)? To a
>non-programmer like me, the following (from Håkon's note) looks similar to
>the FOs that he and Simon oppose:
>
><template match="/">
>  <css:page size="landscape"
>            margin="1.5in 1in"
>            marks="crop"/>
>  <css:page name="left"
>            .../>
>  <css:page name="rotated"
>            .../>
></template>
>
>To a non-programmer like myself, the architecture looks similar.

You'd have to ask Håkon - I'd call it an early attempt at an XSL/CSS
compromise, but which has many of the same flaws as FOs themselves.  So far
as I know, given the cold reception this proposal seemed to get, there are
no CSS objects, and CSS isn't headed in that direction.

Simon St.Laurent
XML: A Primer
Sharing Bandwidth / Cookies
http://www.simonstl.com


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