RE: Future of DSSSL: What about PDF?

[Avi Kivity <Avi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Saturday, March 06, 1999 06:56, Carlos Villegas [SMTP:cav@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
wrote:
> 
> As I understand the page-sequence FOs are not currently implemented
> by
> Jade. Though, James has said, implementing the front end part of it
> should be relatively easy, however no backend can currently support
> the DSSSL page model. 
> 
> Where can I get some examples on using the page-sequence FOs? It's
> difficult for me to understand how they should work from the spec.
> And since there are no tools to play with...
> 

If you have any specifics in mind, post, though I believe there is only one
person on this mailing list who can give authoritative answers. It would be
interesting to see how others interpret the scriptures.

> I thought about attempting to design such a formatter some time ago.
> 
> However, it's been only that, just an attempt!

Was it an actual attempt? or just a thought? :-)

> One of the key points, of course,  is to implement the DSSSL 
> page model and the synchronization flow objects from the start, 
> then a simple-page-sequence would be implemented in terms of the 
> more general page-sequence. There's no gain on not implementing
> the page model, we already have that. 
> However, after reading the spec several times about the page
> model, I need some practical examples, to make sure I have
> the correct interpretation.
> 

I think the best way to proceed is to write a formatter+text backend which
supports all flow objects, then generalize it to more capable page
description languages.
The formatter must support two interfaces:
- an interface to the front-end that receives sosofos and requests
evaluation of expressions
- an interface to the back-end to send output and request measurements
I don't think the formatter can work using unidirectional communications
with either the front-end or the back-end, so no independent interface
languages here.

Not really in response to the questions, just some thoughts...

---
"The only words which have meaning are the last ones spoken"


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