[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Future of Formatting Objects (XSL/FO)
I was rather surprised by the amount of negativity in this discussion; my original posting was meant to give support to those people who are actually working on FOP, rather than get them depressed! It seemed axiomatic to me that FOs were a good thing. Taking CML as an example, I need to have a way of rendering the information [I shall avoid the word "print"]. At present that rendering is usually in pixels - a highly dangerous process - as pixels can get eliminated by rescaling and the *wrong* information gets communicated. XML is the obvious answer. I agree wholeheartedly that rendering should be to all sorts of media [and have consistently argued for this on XML-DEV since it started]. At present our methods of *sending renderable information over the WWW* are horrible. We have the following: - proprietary. I am not convinced that Word+Framemaker sent to a UNIX box is an ideal solution. - status quo - XML, with no default method of rendering it. If we compare the situation with SVG two years ago we had similar discussions. SVG has no chance because: - no one wants it - CGM/Framemaker/VRML/whatever does everything that anyone wants - the manufacturers will never agree SVG isn't finished but already we have several high-quality implementations, which some of us are already starting to use enthusiastically. The prototypes had missing bits and bugs but I haven't heard a negative word on this list about SVG recently. So why can't FOP have the same dynamics? If a group of committed people want to drive it forward, what is lost? No one has suggested that it is taking us away from a currently ongoing better way of doing it, or that if it succeeds it will undermine the rest of XML. I see XML-DEV as a way of encouraging collaborative efforts whether or not they finally succeed "in the market place". Personally I will use the results of FOP and do what little I can to support it. But then I spend most of my time near windmills. P. *************************************************************************** This is xml-dev, the mailing list for XML developers. To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@x...&BODY=unsubscribe%20xml-dev List archives are available at http://xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ ***************************************************************************
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