[XSL-LIST Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Formatting Objects considered harmful
... > >I'm strongly in favor splitting "XSL" into a "pure" transformation language >plus something else. CSS1/2/3 are much farther along than FOs, and it does >seem strange for W3C to have two formatting efforts underway. One of the >many advantages of creating a distinct "XTL" is that the CSS vs. FO >tradeoffs could be addressed head on, without the distraction of >transformation issues. I strongly agree. However, I see another advantage of splitting - it comes from FO part itself. I have done some experiements with rendering FO to CSS and it seems to me that even FO is ( kind of ) superset of CSS, there are some small things that make developer's life much harder than it could be. Why should I map 'space-after' to 'margin-bottom'? Realy, I don't underdstand if there is any technical reason for separating CSS from FO... they are *so* close... I appreciate the efforts that XSL workgroup did trying to syncronize FO with CSS, but unfortunately, it seems that here is the area when 70% syncronization is not much better than 50% syncronization, because only 99% matters. .... <EXAMPLE> In our existing world if you want to create *realy* *good* HTML page you should sometimes ( maybe it's better to say "always") create 2 different versions of the same HTML page for IE and Netscape. Unfortunately, a couple of small-but-different things can sometimes 'kill' significant efforts. </EXAMPLE> I feel that existing versions of CSS and FO are not syncronized 'enough'. <DESIGN> <WHY> If comparing XML/CSS with XML/XSL, CSS is better because of: 1. Simplicity. XSL is better because of: 1. Transformation part. 2. Some small differences ( line-spacing ;-) in FO part. ( well, 'small' is relative, but most of formatting functionality is common for FO and CSS ;-) </WHY> <SUGGESTION> a. Let's have transformation part separated from FO part (well... we *already* have XT ;-) b. I think making XFO to be CSS + "some XSL-specific small things, easy recognizable by name" would be better than situation we have now with those 2 same-but-different formatting engines. </SUGGESTION> <RISK> Unfortunately, strong adjusting CSS to FO and *back* may be a bit painful, but from my point of view it would be worth the efforts. </RISK> </DESIGN> Rgds.Paul. http://www.pault.com paul@xxxxxxx XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
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