Re: Formatting Objects considered harmful

What about this scenario:

Assume the future existence of some specification for aural presentation
objects: APOs in parallel to FOs.
Assume a set of commonly used XML DTDs/schemas/whatever with known
semantics. 
For each of these DTDs it should not be to hard to write general
transformations into APOs that makes sense of the information marked up
according to the DTD.

My point here is that you dont need to produce one XTL sheet per
document, it is one per commonly used DTD. I dont see that as
unrealistic at all. An aurally enabled browser looks at the doctype and
uses the stylesheet installed for that document type. 

If you dont know the document type, you wont get at the semantics
anyway, with or without eyesight.

IMO the reason you can easily process properly-designed HTML is that it
is a commonly known document type. Just as ordinary browsers have a
built in visual presentation of HTML, you have a built in aural
presentation of HTML constructs, right?

Fredrik Lindgren
Upright Engineering AB

Paul Prescod wrote:
> 
> Håkon Wium Lie wrote:
> >
> > James Clark wrote:
> >
> >  > With XSL you also always have the possibility of doing the right thing.
> >  > Instead of sending the client a document that uses XSL FOs along with an
> >  > XSL stylesheet that does the identity transform, you normally send the
> >  > client a semantically meaningful XML document along with an XSL
> >  > stylesheet that transforms that into XSL FOs.
> >
> > I agree this is a much better model. However, in order for it to
> > produce good aural renderings it requires that each document comes
> > with an XTL sheet able to transform it into aural formatting objects.
> > That's unrealistic.
> 
> I think that this is the central argument. It isn't about abuse: it's
> about making it easy for people to do the right thing. As I understand it,
> not being sight impaired, properly-designed HTML can be easily processed
> by software designed for the sight impaired. That means that instead of
> developing x different "applications" -- one for the sighted, one for the
> blind, one for the color blind, etc., you develop one "application"
> *carefully*.
> 
> In the XSL FO world, it seems that you need to specifically target each
> disability because the FOs are not designed to degrade.
> 
> --
>  Paul Prescod  - ISOGEN Consulting Engineer speaking for only himself
>  http://itrc.uwaterloo.ca/~papresco
> 
> Company spokeswoman Lana Simon stressed that Interactive
> Yoda is not a Furby. Well, not exactly.
> 
> "This is an interactive toy that utilizes Furby technology,"
> Simon said. "It will react to its surroundings and will talk."
>   - http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/19222.html
> 
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