[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: XML, Rich Internet Apps
> -----Original Message----- > From: Danny Ayers [mailto:danny666@v...] > > First of all I must say it's very refreshing to hear comments from someone > tech-savvy who's working in a field like graphic design who is prepared to > look at the technologies without religious dogma. Thanks. It's all just a big accident. There's a lot of creativity in programming, especially in XSLT. I'd love to see more graphic designer types make the leap, but numbers scare most of us. > But there you're talking of systems we already have - producing XML from > data sources is the stock-in-trade of a probably a high proportion of the > people on this list. I think I can safely assume you've mastered XSLT ;-) > It is necessary to see what the results look like, but something like the > Adobe browser plugin will do that. Ok, I do agree that there's still a lot > that could be done tool-wise to keep the designers away from the > programmers > (and vice versa), but the tools XML folks already use cover quite a > sizeable > chunk of the requirements. Yes, the systems are there, but they need to be cobbled together. I can do that, and anyone on this list can, I presume, but most graphic designers I know wouldn't have a clue where to begin. And then there's the whole design pattern question. Do we even want designers (I am one, so I am not bashing these people here) to be involved in data modeling? Probably not. So here is my fantasy all purpose publishing IDE: * It can read XML data sources * It has a drag and drop interface with a property and methods management panel similar to what you see in development IDEs that lets you place an object (node) onto a panel and position it as you wish. * It has a timeline * It outputs it to at least SVG, but my real fantasy is that it outputs to XSL-FO and HTML and has a hook into something like FOP. And if we really want to get silly, maybe it even outputs to SMIL. I know I'm wishing for the moon here. One problem is that I haven't seen any kind of visual-based XSLT tool I would be willing to trust, and the above would require one built in to the process. I've looked at a few, and have quickly gone back to coding, but that may stem from my internal bias against visual editors that began somewhere along the time I tried out my first WYSIWYG HTML editor. But it probably has more to do with that I just find so much creative challenge in building XSLT docs by hand. So basically, I guess my fantasy is sort of an amazing, magical XSLT transformation tool that outputs XML from a visual interface into a variety of formats -- SVG, HTML, SMIL, PDF (through XSL-FO). I have to assume that is either an amazingly difficult piece of software to write, or that nobody has seen an appropriate ROI value in it. Anyway, I would at least like to see an SVG tool that is like that. Sort of a data-driven WebDraw. And with avenue.Quark and Adobe's InDesign 2.0's XML plug-in we're close to repurposing page layout, but I haven't figured out how to keep designers out of the process using those tools (this goes back to my "we really don't want graphic designers modeling XML, do we?"). > > The real power of XML in > >publishing seems to me to be the repurposing of documents. Just > >saying SVG is XML isn't a good justification for using it. I want > >to repurpose documents so that I can store them as XML and send > >them out as Flash/SVG, PDF, and HTML. We're not there yet. > > We're very, very close. Transforming XML docs to HTML is usually trivial, > to > SVG it isn't much harder. FOP (Formatting Objects Processor) [1] can do > stuff like SVG, PS & PDF already. There may be problems using Flash as a > target format for technical and/or legal reasons, I really don't know. All > this stuff can be data driven, server or client, just patch in your > existing > data sources. Again, that's something *I* can do, but it's not trivial for typical designers to patch this stuff together. FOP is great -- I've used it since the days James Tauber was slaving away on it on his own back in the early days of XSL-FO (before it was called that). But try to explain what a class path is to a typical graphic designer. You'll just end up shrugging your shoulders and having a drink together. > > But it > >seems like we could be. Of course, who's going to write this > >software? Not me, certainly. > > I don't see why not! (heh) - the majority of applications are dead easy if > you know XSLT and/or DOM. Okay, you're right -- I can write stuff to make all of this work, and I have. What I meant was that I am not capable of writing an executable to make it all happen at once. Although, if I had Adobe's money (or one day of Bill Gates' earnings), I bet I could put the team together that could. > > btw, here [2] are some simple server-side demo apps. The slide maker takes > form data, wraps it up in <tags/> and then applies simple XSLT to get the > SVG. Though it wasn't necessary it uses HTML as an intermediate format, so > although it's not shown in this demo there are two of the publishing > formats > you mentioned available. An viewer is needed - the (free) Adobe browser > plugin is probably the least effort, it works transparently inside > Internet > Explorer. I've done some data-driven SVG myself using XSLT. I wish I had a little more time to play with that. So yes, I agree that all the systems really are in place for everything I am talking about. What I am dreaming of is binary executables that are within the grasp of the people who could really make the stuff we talk about on these lists get used every day. Making things like SVG, XSL-FO, and even XSLT more accessible to non-programmers would be a very good thing. I think that the data-driven part of this equation is very important. I don't see any particular benefits to simply cobbling together SVG for the sake of SVG because it happens to be XML. I might as well use Flash. In other words, I don't want arbitrary content in my SVG files. I would prefer that writers create and update their content in an XML document and bring it in to whatever design program is being used. I've read about Adobe's Document Server, and maybe that does all or some of what I'm talking about. But I haven't seen it, and it's 20,000 US dollars. Not a small investment for people to make. And that doesn't include the cost of hiring an IT person or two to make it work, or the training it would require to get staffers to use it properly. It sounds more like a product for Lockheed than an ad agency (my typical hang-out). Cheers, Chuck White ------------------------- Author, Mastering XSLT, Sybex Books Co-Author, Mastering XML Premium Edition, Sybex Books http://www.javertising.com/webtech/
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