Re: Using an XSL Formatter as an XSL-FO Web Browser

> The XSL spec explains how shorthands map to XSL properties.
> I would expect any implementation to do the mapping first,
> and then the inheritance happens with the (non-shorthand)

yes well the problem for Sebastian is that he's using an XML parser he
picked up from an itinerant TeX hacker. This has a built in feature
(using TeX grouping scope) of recording an attribute value in a form
that means that it automatically inherits down to all descendents
as each element is a TeX group.

This is part of the general XML parsing, nothing specific to FO.
so at any point you can look at the macro \xxxx and that will tell you
the current inherited value of the associated attribute. (If some
attribute doesn't inherit, the code for the element can declare it
defaults to some fixed or null value). But to handle shorthands you have
to do this  by hand, picking them up parsing the compound value, and
assigning to the lower level property macros. It is a lot of extra work
for essentially no gain. Ie if I liked the shorthands I could probably
implement them, but since they seem like an unpleasant intrusion into
the language the incentive isn't really there. (Maybe Sebastian will do
it anyway, as you say: user pressure....)

David


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Received on Tuesday, 13 February 2001 12:38:12 UTC