RE: XSL-FO Does it have the guts?

[Håkon Wium Lie <howcome@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Reynolds, Gregg wrote:

 > Huh?  Wouldn't that depend on the design of the stylesheet
 > language?  

Sure. I'd love to sit down and design a style sheet language which can
express these kinds of constraints. The constraint in the example
would read somthing along the lines of:

  "if there are no descenders in element (a) place element (b) on top
   of (a) so that the topmost glyph in element (b) touches the
   baseline of element (a), else... "

Actually, when looking at the Microsoft packaging again, it's slightly
more complex:

  "if there are no descenders in element (a) place element (b) on top
   of (a) so that the topmost glyph in the part of element (b) which
   is below any part of element (a) touches the baseline of element
   (a), else..."

This starts to get heiry and I havn't seen any style sheet language
which offers this sort of capabilities.

Until such a language is specified and is implemented, designers will
spend time in Quark aligning elements by hand.

 > So why is it impossible for a
 > DTP package to store its content in an xml file and its styling information
 > in a stylesheet?

By the time you put things back together again, taking the user's
preference and availability of fonts into account, the picture has
likely changed. This is due to the fact that style sheets -- as we
know them today -- don't record the constraints the designer intended,
but instead just record positioning. The DTP package doesn't record
the constraints either, but since they "freeze" the design at an early
stage, the letters are still aligned when printed on the Microsoft
packaging.

-h&kon

Håkon Wium Lie             http://www.operasoftware.com/people/howcome
howcome@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx                      simply a better browser



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