Re: xsl for formatting

Subject: Re: xsl for formatting
From: Chuck White <chuck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2000 19:13:37 -0800
on 3/9/2000 5:28 PM, violet wright at xsl9@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> 1) Should those of us who work primarily 'creatively' forget about xsl and
> stick to css and html?

I can provide one scenario that is *not* yet database-driven that we have
tried successfully that you might be able to relate to as a creative.

We have a lot of clients who run display ads but use the text as in-column
classifieds in other papers. We start with a Quark XPress document and
convert it to XML using avenue.quark, which enables us to prepare it for a
variety of output using XSL. We can then use XSL to output text documents
into newspaper classified advertising markup systems from that same
originating Quark document. The beauty of XSL is that it allows us to key in
on the elements we want to process. We can then send our clients PDF files
of that same output by just running it through James Tauber's FOP program.

FOP is available at http://xml.apache.org/fop/index.html

So now we have several versions of the originating document:

1) the original Quark doc created by our graphic artists
2) An XML version created by avenue.quark
3) Markup created by XT that outputs the markup the newspapers want from the
XML file.
4.) A PDF of that marked-up ad so that the client sees a reasonable
facsimile of the ad as it will appear in the paper.

> 2) Are there any 'complete' examples of xml using xsl primarily for
> formatting, that anyone knows of, that are IE5 renderable?

I don't know exactly what you mean by IE5 renderable, but you can visit
http://javertising.com/webtech/xsldemo.htm to view an IE5-based demo of an
XSL tutorial. It's not a finished version AND ONLY WORKS with IE5. It shows
some examples of XSL in use with IE5.

You can also view a very early look at how our firm be managing internet job
postings with XSL at:

http://www.postsmart.com/service/posts/jobpost.asp -- It only works in IE5
cuz it uses XML data islands.

Actually, we're not going to use asp in our production environment, but the
sample kind of shows what we're up to, in that it takes a form and returns
an html page created from an XSL file. Our final site will be driven by
Oracle, so the technology is quite different.

The actual formatting language for XSL can be found at:
http://www.w3.org/TR/xsl/

This is the language James Tauber's program uses to output PDF files. You'll
find its semantics familiar if you've been in the graphics arts biz awhile.
Look at the editors' affiliations and you'll understand the need to be aware
of developments in this arena.

good luck. 

-- 
Chuck White
Creative Director
ADVANCE Recruitment Advertising, Inc.
chuck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
PH:  (650) 261-1060
FAX: (650) 261-1061
http://www.advancerecruitment.com
author of Internet Explorer 5 Developer's Guide, IDG Books
co-author Mastering XML, Sybex Books


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