Re: Meetup at XML Prague 2014?

On Fri, December 27, 2013 2:55 pm, Jirka Kosek wrote:
> On 26.12.2013 21:19, Liam R E Quin wrote:
>>> Iā€™d be very interested to sit in on a state of XML
>>> formatting/formatters session, too.
>>
>> I'm hoping to have a chance to talk about that, in terms of CSS and
>> XSl-FO at least, and perhaps about the wider picture, depending on who
>> else is speaking.
>
> Paper review is not finished yet, but yes it is very likely that such
> topic will be discussed.

Well, I sent my proposal, though my proposal on the topic for the previous
conference didn't make the cut.

> We also negotiate with some invited speakers in this area, but nothing
> final yet. Stay tuned.

I also made a suggestion for an invited speaker who could trump my own
proposal, but such is life.

> All publishing related submissions for Friday are more then welcomed. We
> would like to see more representatives from formatting engines be there,
> of course. But in past only Antenna House was there, if I recall it
> correctly (and xmlroff, of course).

The only time that I recall seeing multiple vendors in the same room
showing their stuff was the "XSL-FO Chefs’ Tools Exhibition" at XML 2003
[1][2][3].

If we could put together something like that but bring together
"implementers of XSL-FO, CSS, and non-standard formatter solutions" (as I
proposed for a panel last year), I think that would be a significant
event.  But if we can't get a good, representative sample, then it would
just look half-baked.  That would be the challenge!

A key aspect would be getting samples that aren't all one-sided in favour
of one technology: e.g., complex headers and footers wouldn't play well on
CSS formatters (without vendor extensions), whereas floats spanning a
subset of columns wouldn't play well on XSL-FO formatters (without vendor
extensions), and there are no doubt other things that are a stretch for
one but easy for another.

Regards,


Tony.

[1] http://www.biglist.com/lists/xsl-list/archives/200308/msg00971.html
[2] http://www.mulberrytech.com/papers/
    Search for "XSL-FO Chefs’ Tools Exhibition".
[3] https://github.com/xmlroff/xmlroff/tree/master/xmlroff/examples/xml2003

Received on Friday, 27 December 2013 20:25:08 UTC