Subject: RE: indentation (was Re: About the article) From: "Didier PH Martin" <martind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Fri, 7 May 1999 07:50:58 -0400 |
HI Brandon, <Comment> experience (like XSL) could be built on top of the style language. Ideally, I think languages like XSL (and others, possibly) would be built to encapsulate and abstract the functionality and power of DSSSL, such that you'd use XSL via an interpreter that would sit on top of a DSSSL engine. </Comment> <Reply> There is no needs to do that. In fact, XSL can potentially _replace_ DSSSL. Most XSL engine, will be implementing the first module called XSLT. Most of them will also allow transformation form XML to HTML. The engines do not need DSSSL because it can be hooked directly on the HTML DOM. On the other hand, XSLF bring formatting objects to XSLT. These formatting objects are, up to now, as much complete as DSSSL formatting objects. Actually there is only one implementation (from James Tauber) that maps XSLF objects to PDF. This last implementation do not use at all DSSSL. Briefly, there is _no_ _need_ _at_ _all_ _to_ _use_ _DSSSL_ for any XSLF implementation. In fact, it is better not to because this would imply a very slow XSLF engine. So, XSLT and XSLF are doing the same thing as DSSSL and therefore are competing with DSSSL for the end-users mind share. However, DSSSL can process SGML and XSL cannot. Thus, the only main difference now is that DSSSL can process SGML and XSL cannot. However, in terms of features, XSL has as much features as DSSSL and is competing for the developers mind share in the XML arena. Also, because of the attitude of "let's get only hackers get access to DSSSL", there is a lot of probability that XSL will win. Mainly Because of: a) W3C marketing muscles b) the "lets newcomers adapt to _our_ way and we should not help them learn it" attitude. c) vertue of the language itself especially if integration with XPointer, XLL and XSL pattern match is done. So, part because of _our_ _own_ attitude and part because of the W3C big pockets, XSL can indeed replace DSSSL in the XML arena and do not need DSSSL engine in any XSL implementation (And in fact none, actually are doing so, except XSLJ an early experiment). </reply> <Comment> Well, I could go off for a while here, but back to the original topic. My point in this is that you may not want to go too far to draw someone in to DSSSL if they wouldn't be willing to invest the time to really learn how to use it properly. I guess I wonder if we're looking for more users in terms of those who use DSSSL by using Norm's Docbook style sheets, or terms of those who use DSSSL by writing their own style sheets. </comment> <reply> Restating what you say in other words: Let's limit the DSSSL users to the Docbook DTD users only. What can I say? Only that rigidity is the worst enemy. About the identation and (((( stuff. Did anybody got the intellectual honesty to do a run test a script with identation? If you do, you,ll notice no degradation in execution time. Also, did you compared CSS and DSSSL rules? (I know that Paul Prescod did, but he's now more involved in the XSL community) If you use identation you'll notice a lot of similarities. Have you thought that a CSS user could also learn DSSSL if presented the right way? Have you thought that with the right formatting there is in fact more similarities between CSS and DSSSL than with CSS and XSL? Did you took just 5 minutes to look at the similar scripts (doing the same kind of formatting) script a) in CSS and script b) in DSSSL? If not, just do it and put yourself in the shoes of somebody used to CSS scripts and that you have to show to this person DSSSL. Would you tell this person: "this is only for docbook"? If a lot of people in the DSSSL community think that way, just tell me. I hate to be a Don quichote and would rather do something more useful. Do a lot of people think that way? or simply that now they are more interested with XSL :-) (its OK XSL is a good language). But I thought DSSSL could be improved, that we could do some efforts to have it more accessible to newcommers. Was I dreaming in Utopia? James, I understand you keep silent so metime :-) </reply> regards Didier PH Martin mailto:martind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.netfolder.com DSSSList info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/dsssl/dssslist
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