Re: Interactive XML

["Michael Kay" <M.H.Kay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>This use is outside of XSL's mandate. I think that a slight
XSL extension
>should be able to support it, but there is no sense in
which this is
>"standard XSL's job." Check the requirements spec.
Generation of arbitrary
>HTML pages is not "formatting." That's transformation.


I find this a surprising statement. A formatter has to
produce a bit stream acceptable to some output device. The
XSL requirements statement says very little about the range
of output devices that should be supported, and in some
places appears to assume it will be a low-level device
producing black dots on white paper. But in my recollection
it does not explicitly exclude high-level output
destinations such as an RTF or HTML document. Perhaps they
meant to say it and forgot?

XML has no display semantics. HTML does have display
semantics, albeit at an abstract level. Therefore, IMHO,
producing HTML from XML is formatting.

Mike Kay


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