Subject: RE: Formatting Objects considered harmful From: "Jonathan Borden" <jborden@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Sun, 18 Apr 1999 15:25:59 -0400 |
Paul Prescod wrote: > > Håkon Wium Lie wrote: > > > > A Web > > of XFO documents can be compared to a Web of HTML documents with only > > FONT and BR tags. > ..... > > > Publishing semantically rich XML should be encouraged when the > > semantics is globally known, e.g. MathML. Publishing arbitrary > > XML should be discouraged. > > Are you saying that we should give up all of the bandwidth, performance > and functionality benefits of shipping arbitrary XML to the client? > > http://HTTP.CS.Berkeley.EDU/~wilensky/CS294-5/bosak-lecture/slide017.htm > > I would suggest that the solution to the identified problem is for XFOs to > move up the abstraction level to a little beyond HTML (i.e. > HTML+footnotes+headers+footers, etc.). The right level of abstraction is > pretty well documented in common word processors: they all have concepts > of footnotes, headers, paragraphs, heading levels, cross-references, etc. > I completely agree. The issue of CSS vs. XSL FO is now a well known issue and has been almost completely hased out. XSL FO is akin to DSSSL FO which is itself a well known standard. If we are *only* concerned with HTML and web browser display, the argument for a need for XSL FO is perhaps reasonable (though there are arguments agains this as well). There does appear to be a need for formatting languages which are distinct from HTML+CSS e.g. PDF/postscript/RTF/TeX etc etc etc. As it stands today, it is <em type="huge">far</em> easier to take a FOT and transform this as PDF,postscript,HTML+CSS or RTF than it is to transform from a HTML+CSS tree. The real argument (IMHO) is whether XSL FO is even up to this task, not in comparison with CSS but in comparison with DSSSL. Jonathan Borden http://jabr.ne.mediaone.net XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
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