Subject: Re: Transformation + FOs makes abuse easy From: "John E. Simpson" <simpson@xxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1999 14:36:49 -0400 |
At 12:54 PM 4/28/1999 -0400, Simon St.Laurent wrote: [various points] First, Simon, *thank you* for changing the subject of this thread... this one is much less, shall we say, prone to inflammation. :) Since the flurry of responses to the original "FOs considered harmful" post, I've pretty much shut up -- trying to see how people of such sound mind on both sides of the argument could have such different interpretations of "what is." I think Simon's initial posting under this new thread goes a long way to making clear (or -- at least to me -- clearer) the point of the criticism of the XSL FOs. Nevertheless I still don't get it. The argument, at root, seems to rely on an assertion that the W3C is about to bless the emission (in the sense of "publication," whether of document- or data-based XML) of pure FOs. (Anyone who wants to can do whatever they want to *without* the W3C's blessing, of course -- including generating XSL FOs, PDF, or cuneiform.) But that assertion is false, because the W3C does *not* bless the emission of pure FOs and the discarding of semantically rich source documents (which is required in order to make the case for "FOs considered harmful"). The spec says that you can use XSLT to produce FOs, or you can use XSLT to produce something else. The latter case is outside the scope of the discussion. In the former case, to the extent you've "lost" semantics, you've "lost" them in the client -- assuming XSL-aware clients. If you choose to produce static FO-only documents for distribution from a server, then -- duh! -- no one will be able to search your site in any meaningful way; your site will be less accessible; and all the rest. Like the saying goes, you can't legislate morality -- and I daresay you can't legislate stupidity either. >The growing separation between the >transformation tools (which have uses beyond FOs) and the formatting >vocabulary (which is now another XML application) has created a very real >possibility that organizations will choose to send their XSL-processed >information to browsers using the FO vocabulary or presentation-oriented >HTML. The separation AFAICT is such only to the extent that XSLT can now officially be used on its own. Again AFAICT, FOs can be used only in the context (as the output) of a transformation. >...the 'meaningful Web' project that was the driving force (at >least in public) for the creation of XML is at risk. Server-side >transformation from semantically rich private vocabularies to >presentation-oriented public vocabularies may leave the Web exactly where >it was before - interesting to read, but not very useful. And the dopes who've produced such sites will get exactly what they deserved. Useless pages will get no visitors, and their proprietors won't be able to exchange data in any meaningful way with anyone else. (You can also write a DTD using nothing but "ANY" content models. Pretty stupid for doing almost anything real, but where's the "'ANY' content models make abuse easy" firestorm?) When I was a kid, watching as my Dad puttered around under the hood of the Dodge, I once "helpfully" pointed out that if he didn't have a Phillips screwdriver handy, he could use a plain-old slotted screwdriver instead. Of course (as it didn't take me long to learn), you can successfully do so only in a limited set of circumstances -- when the screw's not too tight to begin with, and/or when you don't care about stripping the edges of the little Phillips "+" and hence rendering it useless thereafter. The range of circumstances in which you can *un*successfully do so, yes, is much greater. But geez, I'd hate for the SAE to outlaw slotted screwdrivers. ============================================================= John E. Simpson | It's no disgrace t'be poor, simpson@xxxxxxxxxxx | but it might as well be. | -- "Kin" Hubbard XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
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