Subject: Re: Formatting Objects considered harmful From: Håkon Wium Lie <howcome@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1999 23:54:14 +0200 (MET DST) |
Stephen Deach wrote: > You will note that the definition of *both* FO's *and* XSLT are REQUIRED > deliverables for the WG as specified in 2.1 of the XSL WG Charter. Thank you for publishing the charter of the XSL Working Group. Among the deliverables are: > (a) a language for flow object tree construction and This part has turned into what I call XTL. XTL is actually a much more general tool than what (a) describes, but I think everyone is happy that the WG went beyond its charter in this case. > (b) an extensible set of flow object properties/characteristics > and values. This part has turned into what I call XFO. XFO is an XML vocabulary for describing a formatted document. While the group was chartered to deliver a set of "properties" (as they are called now) and "values", it has produced a syntax for formatted documets. This is also, IMHO, going beyond the charter and -- unlike (a) -- I think the result is prone to abuse. At the end of the day, the charter is rather uninteresting -- what matters is the resulting specifications and how they are used. My point in analyzing it is that "the charter forces us to do it" can't be read out of the text. The charter also says: > The working group will take as its starting position the proposal > submitted by Microsoft, INSO, and ArborText on 27 August 1997. The submission can be found from [1]. That document has the notion of "HTML/CSS flow objects". One of the examples is: <rule> <target-element type="emph"/> <target-element type="strong"/> <SPAN font-weight="bold"> <children/> </SPAN> </rule> [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-XSL-970910 This concept seems very close to Paul's HTML-level formatting objects. I'd suggest the use of semantic HTML elements (e.g. EM and STRONG) and the STYLE attribute in the output, but at least these formatting objects can be media-independent and this addresses my concern about accessibility. (Perhaps they're better described as "document objects" rather than "formatting objects"?) -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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