Re: syntax feedback

James Tauber <jtauber@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>>Basicaly, the popular choice was to use the transformational part of XSL
>>(dare I call it XQL? :-) to convert XML into CSS+XML/HTML.
>
>What are we supposed to do about serious print applications? What are we
>supposed to do about footnotes, page references, dictionary-style headers,
>synchronised marginalia or bi-directional text?


You are supposed to either define an XML language which specifies all your
printing needs, and use XQL to convert your documents to that (TeXmL would
be interesting, for example). Or, if you believe that being able to specify
screen and print simultaneously is important (I personally do), you could
push for extending the CSS formatting model to include print-specific
attributes. You could replace CSS with some other standard formatting
model - the XSL proposed one is quite good, actually - but what that have to
do with the XQL language?

BTW, quite a few "print specific" attributes make sense in a browser
environment. Take, for example, page headers and footers. A browser could
display a header/footer at the top and bottom of the screen, and update them
when you scroll to match the current visible region. This is useful because
these regions display valuable navigation information (say, chapter/section
information, links to other parts of the document, etc.). Footnotes can be
implemented in a browser as pop-up windows containing the footnote text. And
so on.

Oren Ben-Kiki.



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