Re: Venting

Subject: Re: Venting
From: Guy_Murphy@xxxxxxxxxx
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 12:30:53 +0000
Hi Rick.

Fortunately as you point out he is right on the mark, which is why we can
hope the browser manufacturers will impliment support for rendering FOs so
they can claim 100% XSL Rec conformance. Without such preasure I feel we'd
be wading in the quagmire of HTML/CSS for some time to come.

I agree that it's unfortunate for those producing "bolt on" parsers,
implimenting the transformative part of the language, as it present you
with marketing difficulties. However at the risk of sounding harsh, I'm not
sure your marketing difficulties are grounds for changing a styling
language.

As for giving the matter serious consideration, a quick check of the
archives will illustrate just how seriously this matter has already been
considered here.... to the point of Jihad some might suggest :)

Stepping back even further into the archive you might also be interested to
find significant consensus that extending CSS was a better way to go than
developing XSL. In that consensus it is interesting to note that marrying
transformation with style specs was not regarded the problem the current
consensus seems to regard it. The common ground between the two was the
reasoning that XSL was confusing. I would argue that the process XSL is
going through could be reasonably hoped to be other than confusing.

Don't get me wrong, I find the current situation somewhat confusing as I'm
having to learn a new paradigm along with a new language. I wont however
project my confusion onto XSL.

Personally I see the combination of transformation and formatting as
perfectly logical, and percieve it as quite consistent to have both as a
part of a style language... styling is a matter of transforming something
into a new format. Transformation is the process, and format is the means
to describe a desired result. XSL would only be half a solution without one
of these parts.

I want a whole style language, not half a style language.

Cheers
     Guy.





xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx on 02/04/99 02:05:16 PM

To:   xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
cc:    (bcc: Guy Murphy/UK/MAID)
Subject:  Re: Venting




Again, Don is right on the mark here. To a prospective customer the words
"100% support of the standard" are a lot different than "100% support of
the
relevant parts of the standard". No businessperson has the luxury of
requiring customers to be logical and analytical - in the current situation
we'll often end up with "close, but no cigar!"
The quick consensus that appears to be forming about the value of splitting
these parts of XSL into two pieces should be an indicator here - there is
obviously good reason to give it serious consideration, at the very least.
Rick Ross
Activated Intelligence
Don Park wrote:
>
> James,
>
> I have had the misfortune of being an entrepreneur as well as a developer
> for the past 18 years which means I had to worry about the color of the
box
> as much as what goes into it.  Based on my experience, it matters a great
> deal whether one say "our product supports XSL fully" or "our product
> supports half of XSL".  I will bet you my wallet that it does [note that
I
> did not bet the content <g>].
>
> Best,
>
> Don Park
> Docuverse

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