Re: Customer requirement #1: Decrease font size

On 24 February 2013 00:50, Arved Sandstrom <asandstrom2@eastlink.ca> wrote:

>> Example please Arved.
>> 1. What you want to achieve by provision of such an api
>> 2. How the user (stylesheet writer) uses such an API
>> 3. How that api interacts with the formatter please.
>> 4. How the API is 'reached' from an xsl-fo stylesheet?

>>
> Covering all the bases, Dave. Right now, considering the spec only and not
> any vendor enhancements, we control the formatter solely through FO XML. If
> the formatter exposed such an API, it could be programmatically controlled
> by a client app, which would receive events that it has registered for, and
> be able to act on them.
> How would a stylesheet writer use such an API? They wouldn't. But a user
> writing a programmatic client would. Both could be combined.
>
> The API *is* the formatter, just a different interface to it.
>
> The advantage of the API is that, properly designed, it offers more
> opportunities to control your formatting run and finetune output. You do as
> much as you can with FO XML, because the XML (DTDs/schemas properly) and
> XSLT that produce that FO are self-documenting. But you will never be able
> to anticipate every case with just FO.

Thanks, that shows the mechanics of it.
My immediate reaction is that this is a step away from declarative control?

Next question please.
So now I have an FO stylesheet and some code?
*What* might I do with it, other than request the formatter to format it?
Do I have to request it to format this block (by id?), then that one,
then that one?
I can't see any useful addition to the current workflow from this approach.


Still unclear as to the advantage of this approach Arved?


regards



-- 
Dave Pawson
XSLT XSL-FO FAQ.
Docbook FAQ.
http://www.dpawson.co.uk

Received on Sunday, 24 February 2013 07:30:09 UTC