[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Future of XSL-FO at W3C??
J.Pietschmann wrote: > What's the advantage of using a three sttage approach > source XML - >(XSLT) -> XSLFO+CSS -> (CSS processor) -> XSLFO > if you can transform the source XML into the target XSLFO > directly? What's the advantage of expressing the style properties > in a language with Yet Another Syntax which can provide difficulties > when it has to be processed in the XSL transformation? (except of > showing that one still knows the CSS syntax, of course) The number of steps is of no importance as long as they are performed automatically and with reasonable performance. That's just an implementation detail. The advantage is that you specify the properties in a compact notation that has been around for a few years and used in other similar situations like HTML and SVG. Having (X)HTML + CSS and SVG + CSS, then just XSL-FO looks like Yet Another Way Of Doing It to me. This isn't really about which syntax is universally better. It depends a lot on your environment, background, personal preferences etc. I think it's about consistency. David Carlisle tried to justify the inconsistency by arguing that XSL-FO is a completely different animal. I just don't buy that. Now, ideally, I think that any modern specification language should either be defined with an XML syntax or have a normative mapping to an XML syntax. The primary reason would be to facilitate processing by XML tools. For some languages like XSLT, the XML syntax is also a natural syntax to actually author in. For others like RELAX NG it's probably the non-XML syntax that will be the first choice. I read in a post you made a couple of messages down this thread, that you suggested that the semantics of XSL-FO should be defined in a syntax independent way. Essentially I agree with that and theoretically it looks like an good idea. But in practice, I think that a specification becomes easier to understand if you define it in terms of a concrete syntax (ideally XML), and then provide normative mappings to other syntaxes if feasible. I think RELAX NG is an excellent example of this. Cheers, David --------------------------------------------- David Rosenborg Pantor Engineering AB
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