Re: a novice's question

Sebastian Rahtz schrieb:
> 
> anilia bruho writes:
>  > If anything, I would like to cast my ballot to vote for a complete set of
>  > programming features to be implemented in the XSL-FO standard. Do you think
>  > this is possible in principle, perhaps in a next version?
> 
> I do not see how, because you are not asking for programming features,
> you want a different model in which the FO processor is mandated to
> have a two-way conversation with the formatter (ie you want to say "if
> this, after typesetting, would be more than 4cm wide, do something
> different"). that is a radical change of philosophy.

>From our experiences, most print/publishing companies are working with
tools like QuarkXPress, Framemaker.. where some things can be solved
through a few lines of scripting and they have a direct visual
representation. It's proprietary ... but it works.

We have written a tool the takes XSL-FO into FOP, takes the original FO
and the rendered tree and takes this into the publishing app.

Have a look at the reply I just wrote to "DTP DTD"!


> if two
> formatters set "the cat sat on the mat" in Times Romran 12pt, the
> results are not necessarily the same, because the algorithm to do the
> default interword space may not be the same. typical font metrics (eg
> AFM) do not contain this interword space parameter.

Right, you'll never get 100% between the different formating/DTP
systems. Hyphenation, spacing, kerning .. no chance. Same problem when
going from FOP to DTP.


> Detailed documentation of real-world designs which cannot be solved in
> XSLT + FO would help everyone

I'd love to see more of that, too.

Stephan
jCatalog Software AG


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