[xsl] Re: What is the future of XSL-FO

Subject: [xsl] Re: What is the future of XSL-FO
From: Célio Cidral Junior <ccidral@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2004 13:53:04 -0300
Indeed, it is outdated, and thus not valid because now XSL-FO makes part of
XSL recommendation since 2001. Because I'm a newbie with it, the quote I
read at MSDN led me to question about its world-wide use and acceptation by
developers; when talking about MS, we must take care from being badly
influenced. Anyway, I became wondered with XSL-FO, it is great and I am
working hard to start using it for many purposes.

About the overlap with CSS, I think that the purpose of HTML/CSS has nothing
to do with XSL-FO rec's purpose. HTML/CSS is to publish content over the web
using browsers, and browsers do not take care of document features like
pagination, headers, footers, an so on. So I suppose that worrying about to
resolve the overlap makes no sense. (that's what I think, please clear my
thoughts if I'm in the wrong way).

That few number of vendors/implementations is an issue, I think so. This
makes me stay in use with the current tools (like Crystal Reports) I use to
generate reports. Particularly, I dislike that tool, and, in addition, it
always broughts many problems to me. That's why I started an effort to
replace this tool by something better (XSL-FO, actually). I'm just having
problems with finding an open source library for .NET. I tried NFOP, which
is the .NET port of Apache FOP, but it did not work in my tests; I'm still
sweating to make it work.

Thank you for the attention.


Regards,

Celio Cidral Junior
Brazil


----- Original Message ----- 
From: <David.Pawson@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Newsgroups: gmane.text.xml.xsl.general.mulberrytech
Sent: Friday, February 27, 2004 8:28 AM
Subject: RE: What is the future of XSL-FO




    -----Original Message-----
    From: Célio Cidral Junior

    Below is an excerpt of an explanation for XSLT, took out from
    http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/e
    n-us/xmlsdk/htm/xslt_starter_54dw.asp:

    "XSL is now generally referred to as XSL Formatting Objects
    (XSL-FO), to distinguish it from XSLT. The future of XSL-FO
    as a standard is uncertain, because much of its
    functionality overlaps with that provided by cascading
    style sheets (CSS) and the HTML tag set. If cross-vendor
    compatibility is important, you might want to avoid XSL-FO
    until it becomes a standard fully accepted by the Worldwide
    Web Consortium."

    Can I consider valid the declaration above?

I'd certainly hope not.
  The quote isn't dated, and its facts are questionnable.

The overlap with CSS is fact, trouble is, no one has implemented
that overlap in CSS.

Cross vendor compatibility is an issue, especially with so few
implementations
and a complex spec, but it is being resolved.

The WG are currently looking at updating the rec, so I guess they don't
think its dead.

Perhaps they are just saying M$ haven't implemented it, so its
questionnable?

go ahead and try it, its fun.

regards DaveP

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