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HI Guy, <YourComment> Can I ask the DSSSL bods out there something, as I have no experience with DSSSL? As I understand it, DSSSL expresses both transformation and flow objects (equiv. formatting objects). Would DSSSL users appreciate the split of these? It is also the stated goal of the XSL WG to achieve for XML a style language at least as expressive as DSSSL and CSS... why should we have less than that for XSL? </YourComment> <Reply> Let's talk a bit about dsssl. As we know this is an ISO standard. Some said that it is not user friendly, some said it has to replaced because the ())) stuff gives them headaches etc... all kinds of good reasons. W3 and its members decided to create their own stuff and not respect nor let evolve DSSSL. You know Guy, standard institution are like companies and there is competition among them so ISO and W3 are not necessarily in the same camp, and may that sometime can be perceived like two competing companies. Nevertheless, W3 decided to compete against ISO instead of improving what's there. For all kind of good reasons I am sure. But one for sure, HTML difusion gave W3 incredible visibility and and a strong brand (When I say brand, it is not that i say that W3 is a deposed trademark but that W3 name is more important know and have influence power or power to create action, in one word - it well known now) DSSSL implementation is actually solely reduced to a single implementation Jade created by James Clark. All known derived work is based on this engine except for a Scheme engine named Bigloo but bigloo only implements the template for DSSSL not the processing stuff. At a certain time there where an other implementation created in Java but it died. Jade implementation took completely the opposite direction than XSL implementations are taking now. If you look at DSSSL specs, it is stated that DSSSL is at the same time a transformation language and a style sheet language. All formatting objects are well documented. this spec integrated most concept also behind XSL like grove and property sets that themselves came from Hytime. The fact is that the only implementation did only implement the formatting objects and not the transformation part made that concretely speaking people could use only formatting object but not the transformation part. James invented a clever mechanism to transform using formatting object but this was not the transformation part of the specs. So what happened? totally the opposite of what's happening today with XSL. XSL concrete implementations except one. started with transformation and to be more specific with XML->HTML transformation in mind. Not a bad thing, of course, because it is grounded in real commercial issues and market need. Not 100% of the market have a HTML 4.0 compliant browser so imagine now having a XSL compliant one!!!! Like I said earlier, we tend to forget technology introduction cycle which takes always more time than we think it takes and if we doubt, let's just sit down for a moment and think why this list is not using MHTML mail even if is a 2 years old standard (to reassure people - MHTML does not mean Microsoft HTML but Mail HTML :-). What we have to learn from DSSSL story is that the real standard has been imposed by concrete implementations. Just ask today people about DSSSL and you'll have probably the linkage to Jade. So DSSSL is now synonymous to Jade. Like if most implementations Microsoft included, includes only the transformation part, XSL will be associated to the transformation part. There is an historical difference, W3 brand create quite a lot of action and conviced at least 5 to 10 people or companies to create a XSL implementation. ISO brand didn't created so much activity. Now that W3 brand has motivated people to invest time and money and that we have healthy competition and users having liberty of choice. These producers and some erly adopters are asking W3 to give them some chance and have their work be "standard" compliant. Like you said W3 aware of the strength of its brand may show some strong resilience and would prefer have these people as testers or specs validator than active partners but that's an other story that repeat itself when an intitution is gaining power (exception: IETF which is surprisingly democratic after all these years, I am still amazed of that) I am writing an article about CSS, XSL and DSSSL and more and more I dig in the subject more and more these three things are very linked. Because the same people are involved in these projects and also because these three languages share the same goals and in a certain way could compete for our mind share. I think that the real issue here is not so much the piece of paper (a spec is not more not less than that until it takes life with a real implementation). It is more the fact that W3 is now a well known brand with as much power as Microsoft in a certain part of the population. To say 100% standard compliant is today a good marketing tool because the market wants that. To say that it is 100% compliant with W3 is even more credible. The whole point is here, W3 has power. Power to make or destroy. Power given by that brand. As all institution they may use their power in one way or an other. If W3 do not represent the interest of the user community of the interest of small guys (sometime not having the money to pay for membership, or having the money but not for all travel expenses and believe me, it can cost you a lot just to be _there_ enough to influence, so you can make your own deduction of who can influence the most). W3 do not necessarily represent the end user community interests but first and foremost, its own members interests (even if some W3 employees wants to and have good intentions for these end users). So, W3 today has more power and if you look closely to recent history, even Microsoft has to deal with now. W3 organism will act for its own interest and that is the interest of its members. And just look at this list historical track and you may notice as a good historian that sometime the relationship is not necessarily two way (like IETF) but more a like a group begging W3 to listen to their voice and no official channel or mechanism to include non paying members (we should not forget that it is not their business model) nor any voting forum open to free participation (for all kinds of good reasons I am sure). So contrary to DSSSL history where ISO only created very little action. XSL story started with W3 created at least 5 to 10 implementations or work in progress from an incomplete spec. This is incredible influence power (mostly based on the big HTML base out there). If we wait for client side, you can guess who will benefit (do you have doubts about it?) Waht will happen to these 5 to 10 early workers. Only help big guys reduce their expenses by having cheap testers? Or have these people introduce their work on the market and maybe in the log run have a chance to change the imbalance of power we have with big companies. More than that, maybe have a chance to accelerate a bit the introduction of this technology. In fact, Guy, these guys have more to loose if XSL is not out here in the market before the end of the year than big guys who don't give a dam anyway, they _have_ the market, so why rush? It only entrepreurs or individual who have to gain somethin because they do not _have_ the market but want to get a _piece_ of it. And these liliputians often force big guys to move. I do not think that people proposing a XSL spec split are in a go for an other tea party :-) but try to make a living or believe in a cause or more simply, have a job do to and has to deal with concrete stuff. It seems, that using HTML as a rendering language is corresponding to actual market needs. Having done the job with either DSSSL and XSL and I can provide to all real examples like a DSSSL document and a XSL document doing the same job. Even more, with improved version (DSSSL macros) could produce reasonable readable scripts without too much ()))) stuff. I should say however that XSL templates could be more intuitive for HTML developers especially the "template" tag content and not necessarily the "Match" construct which can be as confusing as a PERL construct, anyway not necessarily more simple than a DSSSL construct. So here it is not so much technical stuff but commercial realities, competition among standardization organism, competition among languages and mind share, interest of a few, etc... the real life in fact. I know Guy, this is not necessarily what I want too, but its life. If I support Paul's initiative it is to have things going and not get stuck in moving sands (big guys own the market so, why rush anyway?) and have this whole product and enthousiam that W3 created about XSL reach the beach as soon as possible and force as you want too, big guys to move and reach to goal you also want as strongly as we do. </Reply> Yours truly Didier PH Martin mailto:martind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.netfolder.com XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
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