Re: Formatting Objects considered harmful

A number of folks have taken issue with my previous post on this subject.
Granted, I kind of soared overboard with the phrasing (especially the crack
about the Dadaist fringe of Web developers). But I'm still stuck with the
same general question, which has nothing to do with the technical merits or
drawbacks of FOs as such, or vis-a-vis CSS.

The main point to my way of thinking is:

(1) Given the general principle which (as I understand it) Håkon's paper
lays out -- that constructing presentations using FOs only is harmful; and

(2) Given the point which Lars, Scott, and Paul (and Håkon himself, in his
followup to my first post on the subject) make -- that clearly people are
already using PDF and similar file formats to do just what an FO-only
presentation would do; then

(3) *Why* would the availability of FOs as outlined in the current XSL WD
encourage the abuse of FOs?

What I'm asking for is some role-playing. Say you're a content developer or
a software author. You read about these XSL FO beasties and think to
yourself (not having had the benefit of reading Håkon's essay yet), "Wow!
Now *there's* something I can use for [insert ill-considered purpose here]!"

What is it that would make using XSL FOs even remotely appealing to you,
especially given the alternatives that already exist? What've they got that
PDF et al. ain't got?

At 09:38 AM 4/18/99 -0500, Paul Prescod wrote:
>So XFOTs have all of the costs and benefits of PDF -- except that XFOTs do
>*not* require a plugin because their implementation is mandated by the
>W3C. This is exactly Håkon's point: we are making it easier to use a
>PDF-like language by mandating the implementation of a PDF-like language.
>The "tools for easily creating that content" will presumably appear for
>the same reason that tools for creating PDF exist.

But if a hypothetical tool vendor implemented semantics-free PDF-like FOs
*without* the transformational component of XSL, wouldn't that depart from
the W3C's "mandate"? (My reading of the XSL DTD says that an FO requires a
transformational parent and can't be used on its own.)

As Lars said on a different point, people will do pretty much what they can
get away with. To that I'd add only the phrase "...and what they want to." 

I'm not arguing any of the points anyone has made; I just honestly can't
understand why someone would want to implement either XSL FO-only documents
or software. What'd be in it for them? And if there's no obvious motive to
trespass, why call out the National Guard to erect fences?

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