Re: ANN: Evaluation Version of RenderX XSL FO Formatter

> Offering the world a nice tool based on an old draft of the spec is,
> IMHO, a mistake. Waiting until it supported the current spec would
> have been much better.

It depends on the perspective you choose. Many people admit the quality of our
renderer but still choose FOP for their pilot projects; giving them a
possibility to try our product instead of FOP may be irrelevant from the point
of view of eternity, but is vital for a small startup company like ours.

> Which of the two scenarios is better?
>
>  a) people like the thing, get stuck into it, and we start having
> these nonsensical conversations about "oh you mean *that* draft of the
> language"

Sebastian, you overestimate us. We aren't that influential as to impose our
implementation as a reference to anybody.  I don't even think the number of
people currently playing with XSL FO is enough to create problems of dialectal
diversity.

Another excuse is that in most cases, XSL FOs can be converted from the old to
the new draft by means of an XSLT stylesheet (which I intend to publish when
appropriate); so the switch between the two shouldn't be traumatic.

The XEP version currently released has already a fairly representative
functionality, soundly implemented (remember, this is the second rewrite!) and
extensively tested. We at RenderX think it's time to find the right place for it
on the market. We could not wait any more.

>  b) no-one uses it, as the language it implements isn't currently
> documented, and RenderX fail to get the feedback they deserve

c) RenderX releases a conformant version, before any real problems accumulate;
in a meanwhile, XSLT community gets some awareness of XSL FOs, learns writing
stylesheets and starts demanding more functionality ;-).

(BTW, the 1999-04-21 draft is still present on W3C site; I have put links to it
from several points on our site. The DTD supplied with XEP contains a dozen of
pages of comments discussing our vision of that draft; and XEP product page has
been checked to reflect its current state yesterday. There should be enough
documentation to start experimenting with XEP; if you disagree, please let me
know).

Best regards,

Nikolai Grigoriev
RenderX


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