Thanks! The story behind it is quite interesting! I'm very surprised that
I've never heard of it before I started to learn XML. 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: cutlass [mailto:cutlass@xxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: September 6, 2001 8:04 AM
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re:  FOO vs FO
> 
> 
> FOO is from foobar, a military term
> 
> which means something like Fouled Up Beyond All Belief
> 
> http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3092.txt
> 
> cheers, jim fuller
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Hewko, Doug" <Doug.Hewko@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2001 12:58 PM
> Subject:  FOO vs FO
> 
> 
> > Does anyone know why FOO was chosen to mean anything?
> >
> > From the W3 site, in a message at
> > 
> "http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/msg00613.html", someone
> asked
> > "What does foo.bar mean in CSS?". The response was:
> >
> > Ah, a puzzle!
> >
> > 1. The literal answer is probably not the answer the author is
> > looking for.
> >
> > 2. `foo' and `bar' are commonly used as placeholders for arbitrary
> > character strings.
> >
> > In XML Bible by E. Harold, page 52, the author says that FOO means
> "whatever
> > you want it to". Further down, on page 517, we find that 
> for formatting
> > objects, the defacto standard prefix is "FO".
> >
> > Why was FOO and FO chosen instead of something less confusing? I can
> > understand FO for formatting objects, but why FOO? Why not 
> XXX or ABC??
> >
> >  XSL-List info and archive:  
> http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
> >
> 
> 
>  XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
> 

 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list