Re: (dsssl) identity transforms in Jade

["Christopher R. Maden" <crism@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, Karl.

At 13:53 9-07-2001, Karl Critz wrote:
> I am looking for a way to style my XML documents into RTF.
> I am using XSL

YM "XSLT".  HTH.

> as my transform language. There is no RTF XSL-FO backend that I know of, 
> so I was thinking that I  could produce a .fo file from my XSLT engine, 
> send that file to OpenJade, then use an identity transform.  Messy, but 
> theoretically effective.
>
>   file.xml -> [xslt] -> file.fo -> [jade] -> file.rtf
>                  ^                    ^
>               style.xsl             identity.dsl
>
>
> I did some digging on the DSSSList and discovered some discussion of 
> identity transforms.  Everyone seemed to agree that it would be nice to 
> have one, but one was never written.
>
> The only alternative I can see is maintaining separate stylesheets and 
> sending my XML file straight to Jade with style.dsl.  I would strongly 
> prefer not to maintain stylesheets in dsssl and xsl.
>
> * Does my approach seem reasonable?
> * Have I missed any alternatives?
> * Is there such an identity transform out there?
> * If not, how difficult would it be to write one?

What exactly do you mean by "a .fo file" here?  If you mean an XSL 
Formatting Objects file, then I don't think an identity transformation is 
going to help you (unless Jade added XSL support while I wasn't 
looking).  What you need is a stylesheet for formatting objects that 
formats them as DSSSL flow objects.  That's not going to be trivial for 
full support, since there are a few differences in the formatting model, 
but for your particular documents, you should probably be OK.

However, I have to wonder why you can't just write a DSSSL stylesheet for 
your XML.  Are you planning to use full XSL at some later date?

-Chris
--
Christopher R. Maden, XML Consultant
DTDs/schemas - conversion - ebooks - publishing - Web - B2B - training
<URL: http://crism.maden.org/consulting/ >
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