Re: Formatting Objects considered harmful

[Håkon Wium Lie <howcome@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

James Clark wrote:

 > With XSL you also always have the possibility of doing the right thing. 
 > Instead of sending the client a document that uses XSL FOs along with an
 > XSL stylesheet that does the identity transform, you normally send the
 > client a semantically meaningful XML document along with an XSL
 > stylesheet that transforms that into XSL FOs.

I agree this is a much better model. However, in order for it to
produce good aural renderings it requires that each document comes
with an XTL sheet able to transform it into aural formatting objects.
That's unrealistic. 

 > > If you use FO as a document format, you only have a formatting
 > > vocabulary at your disposal and your objects are bound to a certain
 > > media type.
 > 
 > I don't see anybody recommending a Web of FOs any more than I see
 > anybody recommending a Web of <span style="..."> HTML.

W3C has deprecated presentational elements in HTML4 (e.g. FONT) and the
STYLE attribute comes with warnings. I don't see similar warning signs
being set up for XFO. 

-h&kon

Håkon Wium Lie             http://www.operasoftware.com/people/howcome
howcome@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx                      simply a better browser





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