RE: Transformation + FOs makes abuse easy

Subject: RE: Transformation + FOs makes abuse easy
From: "Reynolds, Gregg" <greynolds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1999 13:49:28 -0500

-----Original Message-----
From: Simon St.Laurent [mailto:simonstl@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, April 28, 1999 11:54 AM
To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Transformation + FOs makes abuse easy



The original proposals behind XSL seem to have intended that transformation
and presentation go together, and that formatting objects would exist only
inside of rendering software. 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.

Not possibility; certainty.  Look at the business incentives from the
perspective of software developers.  XSL provides a standardize language for
partially formatted output, which frees developers to concentrate on the
things they do best.  Why would a vendor of data management software try to
write a formatting engine, and why would a vendor of formatting engines try
to write a query engine?  Given a standard for data interchange, vendors can
focus on the things they do best, with relatively high confidence that the
market will generate solutions to the part they themselves don't want to
tackle.  The only incentive against this is...W3C exhortations?

This is not abuse, its use.  The stone that one builder refuses is another's
cornerstone.

I'm not sure user organizations will necessarily care one way or the other;
they will always be able to tailor their environments to get what they want
out of the tools.  

These are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect those of my
employer nor the XSL WG.

Cheerios

Gregg Reynolds


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