Re: Formatting Objects considered harmful

Håkon Wium Lie wrote:
> 
> James Clark wrote:
> 
>  > This issue here is whether to send (X)HTML or arbitrary XML to the
>  > client. That's a reasonable issue, and I think there are good arguments
>  > for keeping the XML that you send to the client close to HTML,
> 
> I agree.
> 
>  > but it's
>  > no basis for the claim that XSL Formatting Objects are harmful.
> 
> If servers output XFO instead of (X)HTML (or other globally known,
> abstract formats) harm is done.

But that's nothing new: there is the same potential for harm already
with HTML and CSS.

You have still totally failed to demonstrate that there is any greater
potential for harm with XSL than there is already with CSS.  There are
two potential accessibility dangers:

(i) the danger in sending general XML together with stylesheets that
specify only visual presentation for that XML

(ii) the danger of sending a format that contains only information
relating to visual presentation

Both these dangers arise equally with XSL and CSS:

(i) arises equally with CSS and XSL because the CSS rendering objects
(or whatever you call them) and XSL formatting objects are at precisely
the same semantic level;

(ii) arises equally with CSS and XSL because there because HTML span
element with a style attribute provides a syntax for CSS rendering
objects just as XML provides a syntax for XSL formatting objects.

James


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