Cart
|
[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: SGML on the Web
 OTOH, I was very happy to see the transformational approach. Doctor Goldfarb had listed that as a sine qua non in one of his presentations very early in the game. I've never used XSL-FO. I don't do high quality print systems and have been someone who campaigned for simpler printing requirements since well before the web. One had to be around for the 1000dpi DoD requirements. It cost a lot and made no sense in a world of cheap laser printers. 300 dpi was just fine, and even less when the common screen resolution was 72-75 dpi. In short, we were campaigning for hypertext systems even when we were building raster page turners based on them simplifying the information delivery and bringing down costs. Eventually, I had to break down and admit HTML was the best of the worst solutions, and that almost everything else was worse. BTW: before it starts, I don't claim that tranforms were Goldfarb's idea, just that he had it in a presentation I attended and it was one of those AHA moments for me because the problems of remapping were well understood but I had yet to see the need for DSSSL. In other words, in a toolkit, it made enormous sense to anyone who had to write scripts for conversion work, and I'd done a lot of that. I actually liked HyTime because a standard way to express dynamic linking (linking with a timing component) was on my mind. Then every version got more complex and obscure and the pain started. I finally had to buy Durand and deRose's book to understand what was there. Otherwise, it has some very elegant ideas of which, probably 10% are useful in every day work, but the rest are there when the ordinary suddenly turns extraordinary. Also, I am with Tim Bray. <A href= works as is. Leave it alone. When and if we start seeing floating text menus and more retrograde GUI controls in our systems, then we need to dust off these old designs and see what is useful. I don't know if it is useful to design yet another presentation language. That feels like MID IV. Nice design but it undoes too much extant work just to get corner cases into the mainstream. Well maybe. MID was designed because the Navy wanted a notional presentation system that met their requirements. If you hear the term "common delivery platform", it is the same idea as yet unsatisfied ten years later. (Sure, they could use IE, but that is a non-starter in a world that must have inspected and provably correct code.) To me, it seems fitful to make a link mean goto or get AND is-a or has-a. It feels like a zero abstraction: useful in the notation but meaningless otherwise. len -----Original Message----- From: Simon St.Laurent [mailto:simonstl@s...] I'm not questioning that XML is useful, but I am questioning whether "SGML on the Web" ever really figured out the Web. Given that we still have friction between HTML and XML, manifested most recently as friction between HLink and XLink, it seems worth asking. > In hindsight it's easy to say "Oh yeah, of course you use XSLT for > HTML output, and XSL-FO for print formats." But in, say, 1997 or -8 > there was no concept yet of XSLT as a separate transformation > language. And considering what Len said about the old-timers' > experience with web browsers, there may have been a degree of naivete > about browser vendors' ability and willingness to support a new > approach to document rendering. Those are my memories as well. 
|
PURCHASE STYLUS STUDIO ONLINE TODAY!Purchasing Stylus Studio from our online shop is Easy, Secure and Value Priced! 
Download The World's Best XML IDE!Accelerate XML development with our award-winning XML IDE - Download a free trial today! Subscribe in XML format
|
|||||||||
