Subject: Re: Formatting Objects considered harmful From: Håkon Wium Lie <howcome@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1999 12:38:39 +0200 (MET DST) |
Fredrik Lindgren wrote: > Reading this document helped me understand why some people don't want to > split XSL into separate parts XTL and XFO. I haven't heard anyone arguing for not having the split. The recent discussions on this list was: given that there are two independent parts, should there be two separate specifications? Thus, arguments centered around reusability, orthogonality and modularity, rather than accessibility and semantics. > (It's not the use of XTL > alone that is dangerous, it is the use of XFO alone that is) Exactly, so not making the split would be a technical barrier to publishing XFO along. > At the end of the document Håkon outlines some ideas to avoid disaster. > I'd like to comment on one of them. It's the last one where it is > suggested that formatting objects should not be expressed in XML. > > In the XSL draft the following text in the overview states: > "When the result tree uses the formatting vocabulary, a conforming XSL > implementation must be able to interpret the result tree according to > the semantics of the formatting vocabulary as defined in this document; > it may also be able to externalize the result tree as XML, but it is not > required to be able to do so." > > As I see it, the real problem is that we don't have formalism to use to > specify the "semantics of the formatting vocabulary" yet. This means > that we can only specify it using the syntax. I agree that we lack formalisms for "formatting semantics" and this results in having to use English prose to describe it. But, I don't see how you get from there to saying we need a syntax for formatting objects. Certainly, neither DSSSL nor CSS has one. -h&kon Håkon Wium Lie http://www.operasoftware.com/people/howcome howcome@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx simply a better browser XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
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