Re: Observation

[Paul Prescod <paul@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Didier PH Martin wrote:
> 
> HI Paul,
> 
> So you mean that actual XSL implementation do not inlude formating objects
> and this is why I don't see a lot of scripts with that. Do I reflect well
> what you mean?

The XSL implementations can create XML documents that contain the
formatting objects, but they cannot render those to a screen or convert
them to a file format that CAN be rendered on a screen.

> If that is the case, XSL seems popular for its template more than for the
> formatting objects. 

That's true, but perhaps only because the transformation language
implementations *exist* and the formatting object renderers *do not*. 

Rendering formatting objects is a much more challenging job than
implementing the transformation language. And there is a lot of work to be
done on polishing those formatting objects.

> If that is the case, always, DSSSL was not so popular
> not necessarily because of parenthesis but because people seems to prefer
> template based stuff.

DSSSL's make expressions are very much like templates. They just use a
different syntax.

There are various reasons that DSSSL might not be as popular. Parentheses
are part of it. Programmability makes it hard to implement and harder to
implement efficiently. The fact that it comes from ISO makes it "uncool."

 Paul Prescod  - ISOGEN Consulting Engineer speaking for only himself
 http://itrc.uwaterloo.ca/~papresco

So what if one dark midnight less than a year from now, millions of 
computers around the world suddenly grind to a halt? My computer grinds 
to a halt several times a day. ... [Forget Y2K] We're ignoring a much 
bigger bug problem that's hiding, well, right under our noses. Call it 
the Y-Does-My-Computer-Crash-Three-Times-A-Day Problem.
	- http://www.upside.com/David_Futrelle/


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