[XSL-LIST Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: XSL-FO versus PostScript
>Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 00:18:24 GMT >Message-Id: <200302270018.AAA16856@e3000> >From: David Carlisle <davidc@xxxxxxxxx> >To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >Subject: Re: XSL-FO versus PostScript > > > >> In fact, I think packages like >> LaTeX were a major milestone in the development of semantic markup and >> therefore in the lineage of XML. > >True enough and still there's probably a lot more _documents_ as opposed >to database output marked up in latex than in XML. (I'm not sure I >approve of the fact that all references to TeX in this thread have been >in the past tense:-) > >but to return to the original question in the subject line, it is >comparing apples and oranges. It would be virtually impossible to write >reasonable postscript from XSLT, you need a typesetter. > >Even just printing a simple text string like "hello world" >needs the typesetter to be able to determine the position of every >character to specify it to postscript, and to know which characters in >the font correspond (after ligature processing) to strings of characters >in the input, to know all the kerns (fine spacing) to place between >each letters (these are specified in the font metric afm or tfm files, >so at the very least you'd have to have an xml version of the font >metrics so xslt can read them. (I just tried this with TeX and it >kerns between the w and o of world in its default font (cmr)). > >And that's just to print hello world, if you start to think about >writing a float placement and page breaking algorithm in either XSLT or >Postscript you'll see that neither is an ideal language for the job. > >The output of a typesetting engine such as an XSLFO engine is often >postscript (or pdf) so clearly in some sense you can do anything in PS >that you could do in FO, but that is like saying why write in >a high level programming language when clearly it is more powerful >to write in assembler as anything in the former can be translated to the >latter. > >David >(LaTeX maintainer in a parallel life) XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
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