Re: Nostradamus (was Re: FO. lists as tables)

> Doesn't that go hand-in-hand with the idea of portability?

No. I see portability as meaning use of the same stylesheet with
different systems. A notion of portability that means everyone is using
the same system (baring dull issues like efficiency or host operating
system) is not what I had in mind at all. 

I am at heart a tex user. I want to be able to use xslfo/dsssl with tex,
and I want word users to use the same stylesheets. I have no hope ever
of seeing word have a reasonable line breaking algorithm, and I do have
hope of a son-of-tex having a better one (and a much better page
breaking algorithm). So I expect all these formatters to produce
different results.

>  It's easy to envision two word processors that use exactly
> the same file format, exactly the same line-breaking algorithms, etc.,
> yet have completely different user interfaces. 

the user interface is not much of an issue if you are just batch
formatting FO's being churned out by an XSL engine, is it? You are
not using the system to author anything, just reading it in and driving
a printer or screen or voice synthesiser or whatever.

> Why is that a bad thing? If we're not allowed to improve upon existing
> implementations, then why not just use those implementations as the
> standard(s)?

Because the whole point is that it is not a one-implementation system.
It is not an unspecified free-for-all;A by the time the XSL spec is
finished, it will hopefully fully specify what is constrained when you
set various FO with various properties. It is just that those
constraints will be things like font size and spacing around text
blocks, not normally things like how many lines result from a given
piece of text. 

> Again, I don't see why that's such a bad thing. Sure, it means that
> existing code bases are going to have to be tweaked in order to
> conform to the specification

No tweaked, discarded. Are you really saying that (given the code)
getting son-of-tex, son-of-word, son-of-frame, and daughter-of-quark
to all produce identical line and page breaks on a given input would
just be a matter of some `tweaks'. The only way it would work as you
outline is to pick one of those, extend it as needed, and declare all
the others non conforming.

David



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