Re: Formatting Objects considered harmful

On Fri, 23 Apr 1999, James Clark wrote:

> I dont understand this debate at all. What is the difference in
> harmfulness between
> 
>  <span style="display: block; font-size; 12pt; font-family:
>  Verdana">Some text</span>
> 
> and
> 
> <fo:block font-size="12pt" font-family="Verdana">Some text</span>
> 
> ?

Nothing. If anything, the first is worse as it abuses HTML, whereas the
second is just broken as designed (IMHO).


> CSS+HTML has just as much potential for abuse as XSL FOs. 

Absolutely. The answer to the problem is not to use CSS+HTML, but to use
XML+CSS, where the XML's DTD is based on the same DTD as the original
data, but modified to express the transformed data in its own terms and
to include objects that make it possible for CSS to address blocks that
the original data does not directly mark up.

So instead of 

   XML(DATA) -> XSL -> XML(FOs) -> Layout

...we have:

   XML(DATA) -> XSL -> XML(DATA)+CSS -> Layout

I describe the process in my last post:

http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list/archive/msg03896.html

-- 
Ian Hickson 
U+2642 U+2651
U+262E U+2603 U+263A


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