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Re: Office 2007, XSL-FO, and the Adobe "Save as PDF"

Subject: Re: Office 2007, XSL-FO, and the Adobe "Save as PDF"
From: "M. David Peterson" <m.david@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 03 Jun 2006 12:06:34 -0600
word 2007 pdf
On Sat, 03 Jun 2006 11:17:10 -0600, Dennis Barb <dennisxmlwork@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

So, after all that background,

The background seemed important for those who may not have all of the background.




Or is it simply not relevant?

Of course its relevant. I have been spending countless hours over the last few weeks going through the new specification and building extensions that use XSLT as their core. For example, http://extf.net and http://extf.net/GlobalClip is an ongoing project that I have been developing that implements AtomicXML, an open standard I am developing based on Atom -- as it sits right now, all that is necessary is for an Atom file with a .omx extension to reside in the called directory. If there is, an ASP.NET-based HttpHandler will take that Atom file, parse it, and convert it into the proper output, examples of which can be seen at both of the above URLs. In essence, by using a base Atom file as the source file that in turn references either a collection of resources via a 'feed' based Atom file, or individual resources via an 'entry' based Atom file, the Saxon on .NET processor recursively builds out the output with each of these referenced resourced.


I have been working directly with Dr. Kay in fine tuning the Saxon side of this technology to ensure its as fast and as flexible as it possibly can be.

All of source is available to either view (http://dev.extensibleforge.net/browser/trunk/GlobalClip and http://dev.extensibleforge.net/browser/trunk/Research/GlobalClip/src/x.Instance) or check out from SVN > instructions located @ http://dev.extensibleforge.net/wiki/GlobalClip and http://dev.extensibleforge.net/wiki/Research/Saxon/dotnet/ASP.NET/liveclipboard)

One of the extensions to this (the GlobalClip project) I have been working on with Bruce D'Arcus that will implement the ability to copy anything, on any given web page, and if that page provides the proper meta-data in RDF or any other recognized format, when pasted into Word will have ALL of the citation information as part of this. This is possible because of the new Office Open XML format that makes this possible.

While this is only a guess, I would suggest that the relevance to the printing industry for this capability alone is quite relevant indeed.


I suggest that whatever Microsoft may do to add an XML veneer to Word, it will remain an unstructured word processor. While it may be possible to use future versions of Word to create user-defined XML (doing it with the current version is akin to writing by shaping cooked spaghetti into words), the vast majority of Word users will use it as an unstructured tool. So, what ever capabilities are provided for presenting the documents are irrelevant to XSL-FO. XSL-FO is a technology for presenting STRUCTURED documents.


Please see my comments above. This stuff is VERY relavent. At least thats the impression I get from a lot of folks, including Bruce (see: http://netapps.muohio.edu/blogs/darcusb/darcusb/archives/2006/05/31/competition-and-the-magic-of-metadata)

"In related areas, Ibve been chatting with some people recently about another example of my previous discussion about a complete metadata cycle. Earlier I had talked about the relation between PDF and ODF. But I have recently been thinking about XHTML and microformats. Wouldnbt it be really cool to be able to use something like LiveClipboard to copy and paste metadata-enhanced content from a web page directly into Word (and OpenOffice). So imagine a use case of a student reading a research paper online. They paste a quotation into their word processor of choice, and the citation and the metadata used to create it is embedded in the file, and the citation automatically rendered."

The "some people" he is refering to is me (as the developer of this technology) as well as several other interested parties that are all well known, standards advocates, much like Bruce, who are REALLY excited about this possibilty.

He continues,

"With both OXML and ODF adopting very similar file structures, itbs easily within the realm of possibility to do this, and to have interoperability between the formats. We do need MS to add standardized citation support to their formats, though, that can match that which is forthcoming in ODF."


I have an open dialogue with Brian Jones in regards to this exact topic, something that Bruce (as the PM) and I (as the developer) will be working on together to make a reality.



So, any change to the output options of Word won't affect the market for display tools for structured documents.

Again, I disagree. What we have in front of us is a SERIOUS opportunity for XML, XSLT, and XSL-FO. The primary reason for bringing this up was not to gain feedback as to whether or not Word 2007 matters... I can tell you right now from my own experience, it matters more than maybe some of you are willing to recognize. My question, while not really quite this direct, was meant to (hopefully) suggest to those who have interest in this kind of thing that a pretty significant opportunity exists here... Initially, I was hoping to get some general "this is good/bad because of this..." kind of thing that Karl provided (he seems to see this as a good, positive thing for the PDF industry as a whole) but as it related to XSL-FO. However, looking past this, what I am attempting to help bring across here is that opportunity exists for those of us with interest in XML/XSLT/XSL-FO. Jump on it now and XSLT/XSL-FO can have a significant impact on a HUGE Office software market.


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