Re[2]: Generating SVG

["Chet Ensign"<chet.ensign@xxxxxxxxxx>]

     I think you have a real point here James. This is the gray area where 
     layout issues collide with pure content & that's always been a major 
     problem. 
     
     However, the example you mention -- org charts -- is one area where I 
     really would like to see XML provide the description & a variety of 
     backend engines do the processing. More immediately to me, one of the 
     areas where I hope to see XML SVG pay off is in the area of forms. I 
     want to be able to render forms and also plug field-type info into 
     them for automation. An XML SVG standard looks very promising in that 
     area. 
     
     Best regards, 
     
     /chet 


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: Generating SVG 
Author:  <xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > at INTERNET
Date:    2/20/1999 4:11 PM


Chris Lilley:
> I'm not convinced that XSL is a good way to convert something else into 
> SVG; and I have seen some evidence that it is not.
     
James Clark:
>Can you expand on this?  It is the sort of thing I would hope to be able 
>to do in XSL.  The current XSL draft is missing many features that I 
>would expect to see in XSL eventually.  Is it just a matter of XSL 
>lacking some features (such as support for arithmetic and other numeric 
>operations) or is it something more fundamental that this?
     
I too would like to be able to do this in XSL. But my concern is that you 
would in effect have to write a formatting engine into your XSL stylesheet.
     
SVG seems to me to be closer to the (more concrete) PDF/PS end of the 
formatting spectrum than the (more abstract) Flow Object end.
     
It seems much harder to take an XML document representing an org chart and 
transform it to SVG using XSL than taking an XML document representing a 
report and transforming it to FOs or HTML. In the former, the stylesheet 
would have to do all of the layout whereas in the latter, many of the layout 
decisions are left up to the formatter at the back end.
     
James
--
James Tauber / jtauber@xxxxxxxxxxx / www.jtauber.com 
Associate Researcher, Electronic Commerce Network
Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Western Australia
     
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